


Season's Greetings from the Solo-Organas!

by honeypothux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Holidays, Home for Christmas, M/M, Meet-Cute, Romantic Comedy, Sharing a Bed, home for hanukkah is not a tag and it should be?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 14:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7895533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeypothux/pseuds/honeypothux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking for a random family to let me take a Holiday portrait with. ($20!!)</p><p>So my name is Ben and I am a 24-year-old student. This year for Christmas/Hanukkah, I really want to confuse my relatives by making a Holiday card with myself and a random family saying something like “Seasons Greetings for the Solo-Organas!” Making it look like I married some random person and had kids. It will be an awkward photo for sure with lots of turtle necks and ugly clothes. I want to baffle my uncles and especially my parents. For maximum effect and contrast, I would prefer to have a picture with someone from the Order military…It would be harder for them to wrap their minds around. If you let me take a picture with you or your family, I will give you $20 and some copies of the card when I get them printed off. I think it will be pretty funny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goodwill and Worse Intentions

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously based on [this](http://kylorendeer.tumblr.com/post/149605673427/lilliphus-rifa-thedreamscaperer-honestly).

The ad said this:

_Looking for a random family to let me take a Holiday portrait with._

_$20 –_

_So my name is Ben and I am a 24-year-old student. This year for Christmas/Hanukkah, I really want to confuse my relatives by making a Holiday card with myself and a random family saying something like “Seasons Greetings for the Solo-Organas!” Making it look like I married some random person and had kids. It will be an awkward photo for sure with lots of turtle necks and ugly clothes. I want to baffle my uncles and especially my parents. For maximum effect and contrast, I would prefer to have a picture with someone from the Order military…It would be harder for them to wrap their minds around. If you let me take a picture with you or your family, I will give you $20 and some copies of the card when I get them printed off. I think it will be pretty funny._

_Message me if youre interested with a picture so I can start sorting out candidates._

Hux studied the attached photo of a crumpled twenty dollar bill. The post was, without a doubt, the strangest thing to ever show up on his Facebook news feed. It was also kriffing perfect. He needed a bit of cash and something to do with his Saturday. This killed two birds with one stone, and he was all for efficiency.

He sent off a photo of himself in his Order uniform, red hair slicked back as he glared out from the screen with practiced ferocity. Then, Hux followed with a few pictures of his roommate Mitaka’s siblings, little balls of glee he’d steal to fill the family requirement.

Within three minutes, Ben replied, “Youre exactly what Ive been looking for.”

 

When Hux arrived at the Goodwill, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Ben’s profile had provided him with very little insight on the man’s character. The only thing he could say with any certainty was that Ben was a strange-faced giant who posted a significant number of @dril tweets on Facebook, which seemed like the sort of internet sin only a madman could pull off. So, as he stepped out onto the pavement and pulled Mitaka’s little brother and sister from their car seats, he moved with caution. There was no telling who he was coming up against.

The Goodwill, like all Goodwills, smelled of dusty old carpets and something very close to urine. The overhead lights, fluorescent and old as the Watergate scandal, cast everything in sickly yellow. The old ladies sorting through the knick-knack aisles moved in rotation, picking up broken china pieces like it was all they’d ever done. The cashier said something but her voice, drained by an eternity spent haggling over holey sweaters and old shoes, came out in a whisper.

The children hugged closer to Hux’s leg, dragging along behind him as he pressed into the store. They were two and five, doe-eyed and all too sweet for his own sullen expression. Mitaka was more than happy to hand them off to Hux for the weekend. Heaven only knows that that poor little man never got a break.

Ben was easy to spot among the sweater racks. He was even taller than expected, head and shoulders above the old women that scurried by. His hair was pulled back, revealing the massive ears Hux had spent a few minutes studying online. They were awkward, if not a little cute. Hux found himself thinking of the Dumbo rat he’d stolen from his eighth grade biology class. He’d wanted to save it, spare it from the next week’s dissection exercise. The tiny thing lived in his dressers for six weeks before his father found out and  threw it to his hunting dogs.

Fortunately, Ben looked like he could wrestle a dog or two.

“Excuse me,” He said, pulling the children along as he entered the aisle full of worn pullovers. “I believe you’re the one I’m looking for. Ben, yes?” He put on the closest thing to a smile that he could manage. It was lopsided and strained, closer to a grimace than a grin, but it suited him far more than anything genuine could have.

Ben’s eyes ran from Hux’s red hair to his shined boots, a smirk appearing on his own lips. Hux’s uniform was fine-pressed and starched, so perfect it seemed straight out of a military drama. The second his mother saw it, she was going to lose her goddamn mind. “Yeah, I’m Ben,” He said, extending his hand. “And the pleasure is all mine.”

They shook hands and Ben ducked down, kneeling before the children. The boy, the youngest of the pair, pressed his face to Hux’s pant leg. His sister narrowed her eyes at Ben, staring at him with her arms crossed over chest. Ben offered her his hand, nearly as big as her whole torso, and she refused it.

Ben laughed and pulled his hand away, nodding. “She drives a hard bargain, doesn’t she?” He said, brushing off his pants as he stood back up. There was no telling what evils lurked in the dull commercial carpeting of a Goodwill.

“Oh, of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Hux said. He lifted the boy into his arms, holding him to his chest. Ben laughed again and Hux felt his heart pause. “These, ah, aren’t actually my kids, you know,” He added. With Ben picking through ugly sweaters and smiling, it became very clear that he needed to emphasize he was childless. And unmarried. And totally single and unattached and open to things.

For no real reason, obviously. Just for honesty’s sake.

Ben raised his brows. He looked from the boy to the girl and then back to Hux. “So,” He said, leaning closer as his voice dropped to a whisper. “Where did you steal them from?”

Hux choked back a laugh, holding onto his dignity like it was a kite in the wind. Before he could give an adequate response, the little girl spoke up.

“He stole us from watching cartoons!” She declared, and Hux was done for.

Hux laughed alongside Ben, though he stood so much more to lose. As his chest heaved, lungs burning, his childhood shame leapt out of the past to trample him. His laughter came to a halt with a great inhale and then a snort, so loud that even the children looked up in surprise.

Ben’s smile grew ten-fold and Hux turned bright red. The kids started laughing the moment the adults fell silent. If there was ever a moment to die, it was right then and there.

Ben clicked his tongue and turned toward the racks like nothing had happened. He pulled out a lime green top with chevron print, running his fingertips over the ragged knit. “You know,” He said, looking to Hux from the very corner of his eye. For a moment, he seemed to become the devil himself. “I think I’ll have to make a note of how charming I find your laugh on the card.”

Hux looked to the ground, unable hide his flushed cheeks any other way. “If you do that,” He said, hugging Mitaka’s brother even closer, “then I’ll be forced to divorce you.”

The green sweater fell from Ben’s hands and he stepped forward, brows furrowed. “You don’t mean that,” He said, unable to stop smiling despite the overplayed desperation in his voice. “Would you take the children from me, too?”

Ben was only a foot away now, Mitaka’s brother filling the space between them. Hux looked up and, despite the redness of his face, managed to sneer. “And the house and the car and all four of our dogs,” He said, sticking up his nose. “I’d leave you a pauper.”

“What if I just said sometimes you blush hard enough to match your hair,” Ben said, turning his head to one side. “What would you do to me then?” His voice had taken on a new quality, dipping lower down and sending chills up Hux’s back.

Hux scoffed, stepping forward and holding his ground. “Well,” He said, sugar-coating his voice enough to give Olympic athletes type-two diabetes, “then I suppose I would be collecting your life insurance policy.”

Ben felt his heart leap into his throat, beating against his larynx hard enough to leave him breathless. He backed away from Hux and fumbled with the sweaters, unable to explain the way his fingers were starting to tremble. What could he say? There was just something about a man willing to joke about murder with a bright smile that left him sweating in a way most would find questionable.  If he was still sixteen and fighting the misfortunes of puberty, he might have popped a boner right then and there, surrounded by cat-haired covered coats and geriatrics.

Growing up had its perks, it would seem.

“Well, then I’ll just, uh, let you be then,” Ben stammered, half-buried in hangers and wool.

Hux looked down at the children with an all too pleased expression. Ben’s  embarrassment was apparent to all three of them. Hux had evened the score. Now the only issue was unseating Ben a second time and keeping himself collected.  Then, he’d win. What precisely that meant and why it mattered wasn’t wholly clear to him, but Hux found that it didn’t matter. He’d win, and that was enough.

By the time they left Goodwill, Ben had purchased an excess of awful Christmas sweater and “props." Hux wasn’t one hundred percent clear on what the blender was for, but then Ben had specially asked him not the question his “art." As they loaded up the back of Ben’s car, an old sports model from the 60s with a beat-up black paint job, Mitaka’s sister started whining.

“What is, Myrilla?” Hux asked, staring down at the little girl as she stomped her foot against the sidewalk. Her face was already bright red with frustration, dark brown hair pulled over her face like a shroud.

“I’m hungry!” She snapped, throwing her arms up in the air. Her brother responded by nodding his little head and burying his face against Hux’s shirt.

Ben hopped over to Hux’s side with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Well, there is a pretty okay taco place within walking distance,” He said, jerking his head in the direction of this “pretty ok taco place." “It’ll be on me, wifey.”

Hux snorted. “We’re both men, you oaf,” He said, readjusting the squirming two year old in his arms. His mood soured at the realization that Ben was probably just some straight boy looking to make his joke “extra funny” by making it gay. Not that it particularly mattered, of course. He was here for twenty dollars and a laugh, nothing more.

Except, perhaps, tacos.

“Well do they have anything for a two year old?” He asked, gesturing to the boy with his hand. “He doesn’t really have the stomach for anything spicy or the teeth for anything too hard.”

Ben shrugged and started walking, trailing down the road even as Hux stayed in the same spot. “I’m sure we can ask them to put beans and cheese in a cup or something,” He called back once he’d made it down half the block, leaving Hux to sigh and shake his head.

“Would you even eat that, Erel?” Hux asked, taking the two year old’s little hand with his own. He half wanted Erel to refuse, to say he’d only eat gummy worms and glue so that Hux could deny Ben, take the photos, and get on with his life. But Erel nodded instead and Hux was forced to continue in the mad journey he’d only just started.

 

The taco place was colorful and family-owned, a small fixture in their college town. A few students there, pressed together in booths with laptops and notebooks, gave Ben a nod of recognition. They sat down in one of the corner booths, seated just below a large mural of women braiding the tail of an ass. Hux might have called it well composed if not for the sharpie scrawl obscuring most of the work.

The menu straddled the line between authentic and Chipotle. Hux ordered a wet burrito to split with Myrilla and a cup of ground beef and beans for Erel. Across from him, Ben wrinkled his nose.

“I said it was an okay taco place. Didn’t you hear me?” Ben said, picking at the tortilla chips the waiter set on the table. “You’re going to get sick, eating a burrito here.”

“You could have told me as much,” Hux mumbled, chewing the end of his straw. Gastrointestinal issues were the last thing he wanted right now, though getting Myrilla sick was a close second. Mitaka, sweet as he was, could get pretty defensive of his siblings. Hux liked being alive, so he’d have to hope she’d fill herself up on chips. Given the number of crumbs on her face, she was getting close.

Ben nodded his head before setting both his elbows on table and setting his chin in the palm of one hand. “So, where do our children come from? You aren’t a kidnapper, right?”

Hux shook his head. “No, they’re my roommate’s siblings. He watches them on the weekends,” He said, waving his hand in the air. “He was all too happy to let me borrow them. Poor guy never has any free time with these little devils around.” Hux flashed a smile at Myrilla, teasing, and she stuck her tongue out in return.

Ben was pretty certain that ranked among the cutest things he’d ever seen but, then again, Hux’s snort was pretty high up there, too. “You seem to get along with them okay,” He said, eyes drifting to Erel, who sat quietly and awaited his beans. “Bodes well for your character.”

“Does it?” Hux asked, stirring his drink with the straw. The ice clinked against the glass, distracting the children a moment. Hux leaned forward over the table, boring his eyes through Ben’s soul. “And why, pray tell, does my character matter at all for this exchange?”

Ben swallowed, unsure what could possibly qualify as an answer. Seconds ticked by filled with silence, tension crackling in the air. The muscles in Ben’s shoulders twitched, unsettled by the concentration of Hux’s gaze. Ben wondered if Hux’s eyes had always looked so deathly white. They were green in the photo he sent over. Certainly eyes couldn’t change that much between a computer screen and reality.

The waiter set down their plates just in time to interrupt the standoff. Hux’s shoulders drooped and Ben exhaled, grateful for the rising steam that blocked Hux’s stare. Erel tried to shove his hands directly into his beans, piping hot and buried in molten cheese. He was saved only by Hux’s reflexes and Ben, in turn, was saved by the distraction. He gathered his thoughts and, free of scrutiny, produced his excuse.

“Fake married or no,” He said, already folding one of his tacos into his hand, “I’m a traditional man. I’d like to know who my husband is. I need stories to tell when I get back home, after all.” Ben smiled like there was nothing strange about the idea of maintaining the joke beyond Christmas time, biting into his food and ignoring the way Hux furrowed his brows in response.

“Pardon me if I don’t believe you, but I don’t know many traditional men who get fake married,” Hux said. He cut his burrito in fourths and inspected the inside, pulling up the tortilla with his knife and fork. It looked safe enough, though the beans were a touch greyer than he’d have liked. “Or fake marry a man, for that matter,” He continued, setting Myrilla’s portion down on her plate. She went at it like a ravenous animal and Hux sighed, certain her dress would never survive the meal.

Ben shrugged his shoulders and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, smearing a bit of hot sauce down onto his chin. “Well, fake marrying a man is pretty run of the mill for me. Can’t see myself fake marrying a woman, you know?” He shifted in his seat, staring over at Hux with a locked jaw.

Ben’s expression was familiar to Hux. Staring at it, he felt a cold chill creep over his shoulders, empathy thick in his mind. Few things in life were as stressful as the five seconds after coming out to someone new.  Heart screaming in your ears as you wait for the other person to nod their head or pull away with curses. Tongue dry and too large in your mouth, eyes pleading for acceptance but ready for disgust.

And Hux was disgusted. He wrinkled his nose and picked up his napkin, reaching across the table despite his usual aversion to contact and dabbing away the bit of sauce on Ben’s chin. “Well,” He said, matter-of-factly, “if we’re pretends husbands, I won’t have you walking around like a slob.”

Ben’s face went through an evolution of emotions, turning from fear to confusion and then to a giant grin in less time than it took for Myrilla to drop half the contents of her burrito into her lap. He laughed and turned pink at the ears, one hand coming up to tangle in his hair.

Hux couldn’t help but think he was lovely.

He decided it was good that Ben wasn’t some straight boy out for humor, after all. Not that it really mattered, of course. It was just good.

“Alright, alright! I’ll be more careful, honey,” Ben replied, emphasis placed on the final word in a way that made it harder for Hux to breathe. “But, in exchange, you have to tell me about yourself.”

Hux picked at his burrito and stared down at his lap. “And what would you like to know?” He asked.

“Anything,” Ben replied, drawing a laugh from Hux.

“I doubt you really mean anything,” He said, taking his first real bite of his burrito. The meat tasted like meat, which was well enough. “Would you like me to bore you with my military academy scores? Or will my shoe size suffice?”

There was very little about his life that seemed worth sharing, here. Hux was not nearly as fun or quirky as someone willing to put an ad out on Facebook looking for an Order officer to annoy their family with. What wasn’t humdrum was depressing. But, despite his attempts to downplay curiosity, Ben continued to stare across the table like he was in the presence of something truly momentous.

“I said anything,” Ben replied, smirking. He leaned further over the table, head tilted down so that his eyes peered up from behind dark lashes, mischievous glint making Hux’s tongue dry up. “What is your shoe size, then?”

“Ten and a half or eleven,” Hux replied without a beat, brows wrinkling the moment the words left his mouth. Had he really just replied to such an absurd question? And without even stopping to think? This situation was driving him past madness. He continued picking at his food, trying to place the situation off. “Why, are you some kind of foot fetishist?”

Ben snickered and shook his head, leaning back against the booth. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” He said, winking.

Hux felt his face heat up and grabbed hold of his drink, gulping down liquid and turning himself toward Myrilla and Erel. They played with their meals and smeared beans across their plates, oblivious to the total hell in which Hux was suffering. Children, he thought, had it too good.

“You know,” Ben said. His voice, sing-song and playful, tickled Hux’s skin in a way that reminded him of the weird ASMR videos Mitaka always watched. “That was a weird thing to ask around kids. What if they go back and ask your friend what that means?” He lifted his drink to his lips, biting down on the straw.  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

Myrilla perked up, now aware she’d heard something “adult." If she wasn’t going to ask Mitaka what a fetish was before, she certainly would now.

Hux sighed and rubbed his temples. Well, this was just perfect. “Now I will,” He said, fighting the urge to smack Ben’s stupid grin off his face. Hux ate out the contents of his burrito and pushed the soggy tortilla aside, nose wrinkled as Ben scarfed down his own meal. Why had he come here again? Was he really so bored? Did he really need twenty dollars that badly?

Or, was this all because Ben looked good online and he was thirstier than Tom Hanks in the critically acclaimed, Oscar nominated film _Cast Away?_

As Ben stood up to go to the bathroom, Hux resigned himself to his own trickery. He’d played himself. Flirting and dating - romantics as a whole - were petty distractions. They’d impede his goals and complicate his straightforward, enjoyable life. Yet, somehow, he’d managed to convince himself wasting a whole Saturday hanging around with some guy had nothing to do with how handsome that guy was, with how starved he was for affections. In playing the fool, he’d landed himself precisely in the position he didn’t want to be in. Here he was, flirting and playing cute when he should have been at home working at his next project proposal.

No matter, Hux told himself. It was only one day. He could go that long without growing attached.

A moment later, Ben returned with a soap dispenser in hand. It was shaped like a taco and Ben was laughing, pointing at it. He bent down to show it Erel, saying, “Isn’t this ridiculous?”

And, in that moment, Armitage Hux could only think one thing:

Fuck.

 

They arrived at Ben’s house forty-five minutes later. The place was rickety and old, second story perched precariously on the first. A dozen cheap cars lined the driveway, bodies dinged and bumpers folded in. Above the door, a large plank of wood spanned several feet. The ghost of old lettering peered out from beneath a layer of beige paint. Hux studied it and tried to recall the Greek alphabet - Omega Kappa something or another - and followed Ben across the sparse, yellow lawn. Erel wiggled in his arms and Myrilla trailed after him, her bright white boots turning dust brown by the time they reached the door.

Ben didn’t look very much like a frat boy. He was too old for it and too soft in the eyes. Hux couldn’t imagine him drinking very much or rallying around sports. Then again, maybe frats were nothing like their movie counterparts. As an Order soldier who’d never attended college, he had no way of being certain. 

“Interesting place,” he  said, stepping over the threshold once Ben made his way inside. Closed down or not, the place smelled exactly as he expected a frat house might. Something sour, like old milk or a man left out too long in the sun, hit his nose. For the first, and only, time in his life, Hux found himself yearning for the comforts of Goodwill.

Ben threw his jacket on an overcrowded coat rack and moved deeper into the house. The main entrance lead out into the living room where some other man lay, shirt hiked up around his stomach and laptop burning a hole in his thighs. Ben gave the stranger a high five and exchanged a few words with him in a language Hux could not understand. They laughed together and the stranger gave Hux a wave, one which he stiffly returned.

Hux followed behind Ben, closing the space between them as they passed through rooms with other people in them. He took hold of Myrilla’s arm, tightening his grip every time she tried to pull away and explore a new pile of dirty laundry and dishes. He was already running the risk of dying over foot fetishes and burrito poisoning. Adding “strange fungal diseases” to that list wasn't exactly his top priority.

The kitchen was worst of all. The sink was overflowing, dirty contents spilling out over the surrounding countertops. Hux couldn’t distinguish between what was set out to wash and dry, only certain that half the dishes interspersed in the pile were actually paper and had no right to be there in the first place. The garbage wasn’t much better and the fridge, which Ben opened and crammed his half-eaten taco plate into, seemed moments from composing it’s last will and testament before giving in to the stench of its contents.

Hux considered asking where the bathroom was but, taking all this into consideration, decided he’d rather die than relieve himself here.

“Was this place closed down for misconduct or just condemned as a possible source of biochemical weaponry?” He asked, setting Erel down on the cleanest part of the kitchen’s marble-topped island. The boy took up playing with a nearby spoon, fascinated with the bent handle.

Ben held up his hand, shaking a finger in the air. “You’re actually pretty on the nose there,” He said, rounding the island and returning to Hux’s side. “Ten years ago, some undergrads tried to foster anthrax in the basement. They wanted to kill some professor or something - I’m not really clear on the details. Point is, the school shut down the frat and the house went up for sale for mere pennies. My landlord got a pretty great deal.”

Hux lifted an eyebrow. “You’re happy living in a house where someone tried to make anthrax?”

Ben smiled and tapped his finger against Hux’s chest. “The key word is tried, right?”

The tap on his chest made Hux’s heart stop. He struggled to breathe and, for a moment, he was convinced he’d contracted pulmonary anthrax from just standing in the house. The earlier tingling sensation returned, spiraling out from the point of contact. He stepped back and laughed to conceal his desire to choke. “You’re crazy,” He said, more to himself than anything. Why the hell was he being such a child?

Ben returned his laugh, though the muscles in his face pulled against it. He grimaced for only a moment but Hux saw it, took note, and buried it away in the back of his mind. Ben clapped a hand on Hux’s shoulder and took Erel up in his free arm, guiding them both out of the kitchen and through the sliding door into the backyard “Yeah, maybe,” He said. “Always been a possibility.”

The patio was old and the wood posts were rotting at base, but the grass  was green and full. Little bushes with pink flowers lined the lawn, shaded by the veil of a tall oak tree. Plastic chairs with bent legs crowded a fire pit, glass beer bottles rising up out of the grass like shining towers.  

Ben walked toward the fire pit and tossed the props and outfits he’d purchased on one of the chairs. “Wait here,” He said, dashing back into the house. Hux looked through the Goodwill bag, fingers tracing the fraying edges of old sweaters. He still couldn’t imagine what the blender was for, but all things in good time, he supposed.

Ben returned with a tripod under one arm and a pricey camera in his other hand.  In the company of such disarray, the poor device looked painfully out of place. “Alright,” He said, breathing slightly heavier as he set up the tripod and camera. “It’s a bit bright out for this, but we’ll make do. I think the overexposure might make it funnier, anyway. It’ll be unexpected.”

“Unexpected?” Myrilla asked, reading Hux’s mind. She marvelled at the tall beams of the tripod and reached up for the camera, criminally too short.

Ben obliged her request and handed Erel off to Hux. He exchanged the boy for his sister, lifting  her to inspect his camera. She ran her hands over the side, feeling the raised texture of the grip under her soft palm.

“Yeah,” Ben said, voice turning satin soft for the children. Hux raised his brows, still surprised that a man with such austere, odd features could show such great warmth. “My family sort of expects me to be good at things like this. I was never very good with numbers, so I think they convinced themselves I’m the spiritual, artsy sort.”

Hux inhaled. There was a story in that, somewhere. But he was here for one day, for one joke. There was no point in pressing too hard. And, yet, as he made up his mind to stay out it, his mouth opened and said, “And are you?”

Ben paused, eyes lifted from the camera to Hux. He fell quiet for longer than he had back in the Goodwill, struggling around his words. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and he brought Myrilla to the ground, fleeing to the other side of the camera and pulling the lens cap off. “I don’t know,” He said, fussing with the settings of his camera. “I guess you’ll have to tell me once this is done.”

Hux stepped back and let him work. It was obvious he’d unseated Ben again, embarrassed him, even. This is what he’d wanted back at the Goodwill. A victory. Now, only a few hours later, it felt more like a failure. Hux pursed his lips and took his place in front on the whitewashed yard fence. “We’ll see, then,” He said, straightening his back. “For now, just shoot me.”

“Am I the one collecting life insurance now?” Ben said, looking up from underneath his mess of hair. His self-satisfied grin had returned with record speed. Hux was happy to see it back.

“Oh, haha,” Hux said, hugging Erel closer to his chest. “You think you’re so very clever, don’t you?”

“As if you’re any different, Hux,” Ben replied. He walked across the yard, peeling his t-shirt overhead and tossing it on the grass.

Now, Hux prided himself on his good composure. As a member of the Order’s military, he’d learned to wear a stoneface in even the most strenuous situations. There wasn’t a drill sergeant alive who could make him flinch. And yet, as Ben’s shirt came off, back muscles flexing through the motion, Hux felt his brows raise, pupils dilating. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected it. Ben looked fit even with the shirt on. But, much like conceptualizing a nuclear blast and experiencing one, there was just something different about actually seeing it. He swallowed hard and turned his eyes toward the house. He followed the contours of the uneven shingles and thew a hastily composed Hail Mary together in his mind.

He wasn’t even Catholic.

“Wow,” Erel said, pointing at Ben with his stubby little fingers. “You’re strong!”

Ben stopped halfway through pulling a Christmas sweater on, looking over at Erel. “Mhmm,” He hummed, approaching even though he was only three-fourths of the way dressed.

In another world, one where manners or consequences didn’t exist, Hux might have shoved Ben away and fled to the hills. What right did this man have to stand so very close with his abs and the tops of his hip bones exposed? Fucking low-waisted jeans. The world would have been a better place if everyone wore Mormon underwear.

“Do you want to grow up big and strong, Erel?” Ben asked, finally pulling his sweater the rest of the way down. It was lavender with green stripes, adorned with crude embroidery of elves dancing, and two sizes too small around his arms. His biceps looked vacuum-sealed in overstretched, itchy wool.

Hux would have been thankful for the sweater if it weren’t quite so ugly and if it were long enough to cover those damnable hipbones. He kept his eyes to the roof, ignoring Ben’s presence to the best of his ability, as Erel nodded yes.

“Well,” Ben said, bending at the knees to get closer to Erel. It was an awful move, particularly because it also meant he was closer to Hux’s face. “You know all that stuff your mom and dad say about eating vegetables?”

Erel blinked his big eyes, sparse brows cinching in the middle. “No…,” He mumbled, folding his hands against his chest.

Before Hux could defuse the situation, Myrilla put her hands on her hips and, grinning ear to ear in the way only an oblivious child or a sociopath could, shouted, “Our parents are dead!”

Ben’s smile turned to ash and his face turned white as bone. His lips moved wordlessly, hands caught in the air like he meant to pull his statements from time and space. When he finally managed to speak, it was gibberish. “Oh, God, I’m so, I didn’t really know or anything I,” He stuttered, unable to make sense of himself. He looked to Hux with wide eyes, brow wrinkled. “Hux,” He said, exasperated. He needed help. He needed a way to get out of this awful mess.

Hux just laughed.

He roared, eyes squeezed shut hard enough to make them water. His cheeks grew red with exertion, body bent at the center where the laughter made him heave. Ben shattered in front of him, shoulders drooping as he tried to find an explanation in all this. Myrilla jointed in with Hux, giggling and hopping up and down on the lawn. Ben could only narrow his eyes, struck silent by their cackling as Erel stared on, just as confused.

By the time Hux calmed himself, he was struggling to breathe. He held up one hand and gasped in air, diaphragm stinging inside him. “Wait,” He said between gulps of air, still smiling, “I promise I’m not a psychopath. It’s just…” He shook his head and wiped the tears from his face. For a moment, Ben considered that he might not mind if Hux were a psychopath. He was almost pretty enough with a smile to excuse it.

Hux gathered the shambles of his composure, turning his eyes down on Myrilla. The girl smirked up at him, nose stuck in the air like all the world could kiss feet and leave her sacred offerings. “This one here,” Hux said, reaching down to press his fingertip to her nose, “has pulled a little bit of a prank on you,” He said, making Myrilla laugh again. “Her parents are absolutely fine, though I can see why she lied.”

Ben exhaled and fell back on his ass, head tipping toward the sky. He rubbed one hand over the front of his face, cheeks burning. Myrilla kept up her giggling, running little circles around Ben and Hux. “I got you!’ She cried, arms flailing. Slowly, Ben’s smile returned.

“And why was it alright for her to pull one over on me, Hux?” Ben said, standing back up. He was only three two inches taller than Hux, but those two inches became torturous once Ben decided to start staring down with half-lidded eyes. “What was so funny about that, to you?

“Well,” Hux started, shifting Erel in his arms. “I’m a little mean, to be honest.”

“A little sadistic, perhaps?” Ben continued, still grinning ear to ear.

Hux narrowed his eyes. The air between them seemed to crackle, straining under some unseen tension. The world was being pulled taught around them and, as it stretched further out, Hux could not deny his urge to step closer and make things worse. “Perhaps,” He replied, eyes falling from Ben’s eyes to his lips. Had they always been that pink? Somehow, he hadn’t noticed before.

“Well,” Ben said, stepping away and back toward his camera. The tension shattered and air rushed back to Hux’s lungs, world pulling itself back together. The sound of the wind was all too clear, rushing overhead as Ben finished fiddling with camera and gestured for his “family” to join him in front of it. “I guess I know one thing about my husband, at least.”

“I suppose you do,” Hux replied, taking Myrilla by her hand and taking his place at Ben’s side. He stared down the black lens of the camera, hugging Erel closer and taking military posture.

When they were first invented, many people feared cameras. The superstitious claimed they stole away a person’s heart and mind, that cameras robbed men of their very souls once the flash cleared. As Ben’s arm came around his waist and pulled him close, Hux almost believed that to be true. The camera didn’t flash, simply clicked, but he could have sworn he felt both his heart and mind leave his body.

Ben ran back and forth between the camera and his “family”, setting up the next shot after checking the last. The first dozen were normal, Ben smiling as Hux, the diligent Order officer of Republic nightmares, glared onward. Meanwhile, the children did their best not to blink. After they’d finished with that, Ben took pause at the camera, admiring their work before looking over at Hux.

“Are you ready for the wild stuff?” Ben asked, grabbing the Goodwill bag. He pulled out more chunky sweaters, tossing them toward Hux and the kids. The blender rolled out onto the grass, clinking against the discarded beer bottles.

Hux sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I can’t back out now,” He said, stooping to the grass to help Erel into his outfit. It was snot yellow and dotted with brown smudges that Hux imagined were supposed to be reindeers but, worn away by years of abuse, looked more like tiny turds. Erel, ever calm, didn’t seem to mind. He was, after all, only two.

Myrilla, on the other hand, pouted. She  pulled her sweater on over her dress all by herself, running her hands over the front and the Santa Elmo sewn there.  The burrito stains from the restaurant were covered, but she did not seem pleased.“I hate Elmo,” she whined, turning toward Ben. “He’s evil!”

Ben quirked a brow as he walked back over, various Christmas ornaments and decorations balanced in his arms. “Why is Elmo evil? I always thought Elmo was a nice guy.”

Myrilla shook her head. “No!” She shouted, throwing her arms up in the air. “He makes Mr. Noodle live in his closet! Elmo is a jerk!”

Hux and Ben shared a look, smirks on their faces. “Well,” Ben said, setting up the camera for another round of shots, “I’m glad you know kidnapping is wrong. Makes us look like better fake parents.” Ben draped tinsel over her shoulders and  pressed a ceramic gnome in her hands. Meanwhile, Hux unfolded the bright green sweater Ben had thrown his way.

“I don’t remember seeing you buy this,” Hux said, turning the sweater toward Ben. The face was emblazoned with a ring of four leaf clovers that centered four, simple words: Kiss me, I’m ginger. Hux was pink from head to toe,  fidgeting as Ben started to snicker. “I might be mistaken, but I’m fairly certain this isn’t a Christmas sweater, Ben.”

“It isn’t, but then this isn’t supposed to make much sense, now is it?” He said, giving Erel a stuffed reindeer to hold and hoisting the boy into his own arms. “Besides, I think you’ll look cute with it on.”

That struck any rebuttal from Hux’s mouth and he fell into silent compliance. He pulled the jacket of his uniform off and tossed it over one of the chairs, grateful for the few moments of darkness provided when he pulled the sweater overhead. In that time, he was spared the trying agony of seeing Ben’s stupid, gorgeous face. “Alright,” he said, smoothing out the front of the sweater. It was too large on him, hanging off his shoulders and showing too much of his collar bones. “Let’s get on with this.”

They spent the next two hours racing against the sun, taking as many photos as they can before darkness shuts them out entirely. Forty-five minutes in, it occurred to Hux that he could have made more money in less time simply by offering to watch Mitaka’s siblings. However, before the thought had time to mean anything in his head, Ben asked him to strike a pose against the fence. After six or seven photos and a few laughs, he’d entirely forgotten what he was thinking about.

As the sun started to brush against the horizon, Erel rubbed his eyes and whined. He tugged at Hux’s pant leg and stared up with bleary eyes, little body tuckered out from a day of location hopping. This was the time to leave. Erel was tired, Myrilla looked moments from chucking her gnome on the ground just for fun, and he’d earned his twenty dollars. And, yet, he found himself scrambling for excuses to stay.

“The kids look pretty worn out,” Ben said, pulling the Santa hat he’d worn in the last few shots off. Hux nodded in response, unwilling to speak lest he come out and say something foolish. Ben kicked his foot against the grass, exhaling slowly. He played with the puffball on the end of his hat, watching as Hux helped Erel out of his sweater.

“Yeah, I think we’re going to go now,” Hux said, making sure to keep his eyes down. There was no reason this should be uncomfortable. He’d done more than he’d promised he would. Their transaction was complete. Or, it would be, once Ben gave him the twenty.

Ben rolled his shoulders, nodding. “Shame, I was hoping to make you guys smoothies. I bought that blender for a reason, you know.”

Hux raised a brow, sending Erel off after his sister. “And here I thought that reason was ‘art.’”

“Smoothies can be art,” Ben said, straightening out his back as Hux turned back toward him. Their eyes met in an awkward accident, forcing Hux to hold his breathe and his body steady. Ben pursed his lips and let silence fill the air between them. Though the sun had yet to set, the air was brisk. They could both appreciate their sweaters, ugly and stupid as they were.

Hux shoved his hands in his pockets and struggled to look away. Soon, Ben would hand him that crumpled twenty and send him on his way. Soon, this whole fiasco would be over and he’d be back in his home, telling Mitaka all about the day he lost his mind and decided to waste hours taking photos with a stranger.

Ben held out his hand and Hux reached for it, expecting money. Instead, their fingers bumped together and Hux found nothing but an empty palm. He pressed his lips together and cleared his throat, yanking his hand back down to his side. Ben, just as rigid, continued moving his hand toward its intended target, resting it on Hux’s shoulder.

“Why don’t we take a few photos of just us? The happy couple, and all that?” He said and Hux nodded before better sense could stop him.

Ben took his camera in hand and they walked to the far corner of the yard, still able to see the children bouncing through the grass. They settled down on a large rock framed by bushes, thighs touching together because their make-shift seat didn’t leave enough room for anything else. Hux placed his hands on his lap and stared at the camera, inhaling as Ben’s arm came over his shoulder. They were closer now than they’d been in any of the previous shots and Hux heard his heart beat like horse hooves on the day of the Kentucky Derby.

As Ben lifted the camera in the air, he leaned toward Hux. His breath tickled Hux’s ear, forcing a tingling sensation down over his shoulders. “Say cheese,” He said and Hux forced a smile, head swimming with sensations he dare not describe or confront. Ben’s voice was low and handsome, enough to make him melt like a plastic toy left on a stovetop. If there was a God, he was cruel.

The first few shots went over fine. They smiled and posed, Hux grinning through the way his skin burned where their legs touched. Around the seventh or eighth shot, something went horribly wrong. Hux’s mind turned against him, rushing back against his body like flood waters. His sense that, “It’s only one day,you can resist this,” crumbled under the pressure of their proximity.  With Ben snickering at his side, he could only think, “It's only one day, what harm can it do?”

Hux stopped Ben as he moved to set the camera away. “You’re trying to convince your family this is real, right?” He said, voice clipped and serious. Ben blinked a few times then nodded, allowing Hux’s madness to persist. “So,” He said, turning to face Ben, straddling the rock just to stay atop it, “Don’t you think we should give them something to substantiate all this?”

“Substantiate?” Ben repeated, weighing the word on his tongue like he’d never heard it before. He took a few seconds to try and pick up what was laying down, but he came up short. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Hux leaned closer, coming in only inches from Ben’s face. Now, Ben was the one shifting under the feeling of breath skirting across his skin. “I mean that young,  happy couples taking cheesy holiday photos often follow through on the things their ugly sweaters say,” Hux whispered, looking from Ben’s eyes to his lips and back again. He set one hand on Ben’s knee, smiling. “So, for the sake of the ruse, shouldn’t we kiss?”

Ben’s eyes widened and he sat up stick straight. He looked like he’d been struck by lighting, all the hairs on his body standing on end. Hux kept a calm face, staring him down even as his stomach tied itself in knots.

It was entirely possible Ben would hate him for this. He’d known the man for only a few hours; there was no telling how he’d respond. So, as Ben lifted his hand, Hux closed his eyes and delved into the darkness behind his eyelids. He imagined himself being shoved back off the rock and falling into nothing. He imagined a fist coming against his jaw and harsh words against his ears, the children crying out from across the yard. He imagined soft lips against his own, just firm enough to make him gasp.

Then he opened his eyes and saw that Ben’s  lips were pressed to his own. The hand he’d envisioned as a fist traced the edge of his jawline, coaxing him into the kiss. Hux obliged, sinking deeper, knotting his fingers in the front of Ben’s hideous sweater. He felt his pulse reach a fever pitch, willing him forward even as common sense threatened to spill in and set things straight.

The camera clicked once before they parted, an afterthought in their minds. Their faces lingered near one another, breath intermingling. Hux stroked the pad of his thumb over the knit of Ben’s sweater, unwilling to move away and uncertain how he’d do it even if he wanted. Ben mirrored his expression, lips parted as his eyes lingered on Hux’s mouth.

“Do you,” Ben started, words falling short as he steadied his breathing. He bit down of his lower lip, fingertips still petting  Hux’s jaw. “Do you think they’d be grossed out if we used tongue?”

“Yeah,” Hux said, leaning back in. “Definitely.”

Their lips came together again, harder than they had the first time. Ben parted his lips for him, allowing Hux’s tongue to press against his own. His hold on Hux’s face shifted, fingers falling back to curl in his hair. His hair was hard with gel, but Ben caressed it anyway. Hux moaned into his mouth, spreading his fingers out across his  chest. They nipped at each other's lips and Hux felt Ben’s heart against his hands, his own rattling in his chest like a beast against its cage.

When they pull apart again, it was because Myrilla was screaming across the yard. “I want to go!” She shouted, stomping her boots against the ground. “I’m bored!”

Hux looked at her and exhaled. His heartbeat slowed and he cooled, hands falling away from Ben. He stood and Ben followed suit, standing on shaky legs. Hux looked him over and swallowed, squaring off his shoulders. It was done, now. He’d enjoyed himself a little and now, finally, after so many slip ups, it was time to go.

“Do you, ah, do you think you got the shot?” Hux said, pulling the sweater off and handing it back to Ben. He smoothed his hair down, fingers lingering on the place Ben had tangled with his own.

Ben inhaled, eyes widening as he looked down at the camera. “Actually,” He said, voice quiet, “I think I forgot to take it.”

He looked up at Hux and stared, silent. The sun was almost gone, just peaking over the horizon, and the wind came in colder and colder. Hux braced himself against the chill, eyes falling to the sweater he’d given away and the man holding it. The world fell down upon his shoulders, gravity wrapping around his limbs and demanding he stay. It would be easy to indulge, to relent yet again and allow himself to open up. Ben was charming and handsome and kind. It would be so easy to stay. It would be so easy to try. Was there really anything to fear?

Myrilla shouted again and Hux turned his face toward her. He was losing sight of what really mattered. He was losing touch with reality, with his goals. He was an  officer of the First Order, a man cut out for glorious and demanding work. He did not have time for pretty Republic boys, brilliant as their smiles were. Nice as their lips had felt against his own. A night’s indulgence was already too much. So, even with the world to break his stride and pin him, he walked away.

Hux pulled Myrilla out of her sweater, set it aside, and collected his uniform jacket. He took Erel back into his arms and lead Myrilla by her hand, guiding them back through the frat house. Ben trailed them through the dark, empty rooms. When they all stopped at the front door, Ben pulled out his phone and offered it to Hux. The light glew too bright in the dim house and Hux squinted against it, staring at an empty notepad screen.

“Your address or P.O. box,” Ben said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You know, for the Christmas card when it’s done.”

Hux considered handing the phone back without typing. But, he’d come all this way. The least he deserved was some indication of all his “modeling” work. He typed in his mailing address and handed the phone back. Ben opened the door for him and he inhaled, stepping out on the front porch. “I hope the pictures come out alright,” He said, looking back over his shoulder.

“I’m sure they will,” Ben said, leaning against the inside of the doorframe. He gave a lopsided smile and Hux forced himself to maintain his frown.

“Goodbye Ben,” Erel mumbled, waving his hand and blinking back sleep. Ben chuckled and tipped his head forward.

“Goodbye to you, too,” He said, reaching out and shaking Erel’s hand. Ben did the same for Myrilla, whispering, “And the same to you, Myrilla. I have faith you’ll keep being trouble for Hux here.” She beamed and Ben stood back up.

Hux and Ben watched each other, each waiting for the other to move first. Hux, with a child wriggling at his side, lost the battle. “Ben,” He said, voice crisp and professional.

“Hux,” Ben returned.

“It was nice meeting you. I hope you have a good night.” Hux turned and went on his way, trailing down the front steps and past the crowded driveway. Behind him, Ben stayed in the doorway, watching until Hux had placed the children in their carseats and taken off down the road, headlights blinding.

“Yeah,” He said. “It was nice meeting you too, Hux.”

 

Four miles from home, Hux gasped and pulled over. He put the car in park and set his forehead against the steering wheel, cursing under his breathe. Myrilla squirmed in her seat, trying to see out the window. “Why are we stopped?” She asked, searching the dark road for monsters and criminals.

Hux’s face slipped to smile and then he laughed hard enough to make himself snort again. He threw his body back against the seat, wracked by laughter and aching. Erel stirred from rest and whined, Myrilla’s eyes narrowing to slits. “What is it?” She asked. “What is so funny?”

Hux covered his mouth his his hand, choking on his laughter. When he finally calmed, he was panting and grinning. He closed his eyes and shook his head, unable to believe himself. “I forgot the twenty dollars.”

 

Two weeks later, Hux opened his mailbox to find four bills, an advertisement for rushed auto-loans, and a letter in a mint green envelope. He tossed the ad out and turned the green envelope over in his hand, reading the handwritten addresses. He stood up straighter as he read the words “Ben Solo-Organa," heart leaping into his throat.

He peeled open the letter, careful not to damage the envelope, and pulled the Christmas card out. It was double-sided and made of shiny photo paper, smooth against his fingers. On the front, the words “Season's Greetings from the Solo-Organas!” stood out in swirling red font, surrounded by various photos of their “family." He smiled at the one where Myrilla was up on Ben’s shoulders, tugging on his hair and squealing with delight. The ones where he stood, statuesque and ferocious, in his uniform beside Ben’s vibrant face made him chuckle. They’d kill Ben’s family for sure.

When he turned it over, Hux found three things. First, there was a description of the family’s “goings-ons.” It described how “proud” Ben was of Hux’s ascent in the Order military, how Erel had just mastered  buttoning his coat, how Myrilla had a strong anti-Elmo stance, how Hux’s laugh was adorable and precious. But, despite how sweet that was, Hux found himself unable to look at it. For, spanning the rest of the back, was their picture.

Their lips were pressed together, bodies pulled close. Hux’s hair looked like wildfire in the sunset light, Ben’s cheeks dusted pink. Hux’s  heart fluttered in his chest as he traced the image with his eyes. Ben was holding him close, arm over his shoulder. They looked happy. They looked like they were lovers. They looked like they were in love.

It wasn’t true. Hux knew that. But, staring down at their photo, he could believe it. He almost wanted to.

His eyes moved to the hand scrawled note covering all the blank space on the backside. The letters were looping and gorgeous, smeared at the edges where too big hands had brushed over wet ink.

The message said this:

_Hux, I really enjoyed meeting you. These pictures came out absolutely perfect. In fact, and this just a thought, but I think they came out well enough to warrant a follow-up. I can’t imagine how my family would act if they actually met you. If you’re down to come to our Christmas Eve Party, call me at (555)-450-3297.  Hoping to see you soon, Ben._

Hux cradled the card in his hands, reading Ben’s message over and over. It was madness. He had no reason to go through with this. He had his own parties to attend, his own life to deal with.

Then again, Ben Solo-Organa seemed to have a way of making him to do crazy things.

  
  
  



	2. Merry Chrismanukkah, Armitage Hux!

“That’s it. I’m not going.”

It was the fourteenth conclusion Hux had come to in the last hour, announced after his twenty-first circuit around the house. As it graced Mitaka’s ears, the young lieutenant groaned, shoving his face against his pillow in an attempt to flee the lunacy. He knew better than to say anything, now. Any contribution he made would be twisted out of shape, burnt up to fuel Hux’s pacing. There was no hope for rescue, not when Hux had that damn card in his hand.

“It would be absolutely insane to go,” Hux continued, staring at the backside of the Christmas card. The little note on the back, that which urged him to continue in madness and attend Ben’s Christmas party, stung at his eyes. It was like Tapatío rubbed on the corneas and Hux grit his teeth as he prepared for another tirade. “I mean, hells, I’d never have gone if I’d realized who he was. Do you know what kind of trouble pretending to be his husband could get me in?”

Mitaka knew perfectly well; Hux had already gone over the list, in detail, four times.

“Ben _Solo-Organa,”_ Hux said, the words scraping off his tongue. He shook his head and plopped on the corner of his bed. It creaked beneath him, the cheap spring mattress whining even beneath his slight weight. The room around him was small, crowded by two desks and twin beds, a typical studio in a gentrified neighborhood in which the tech industry’s presence drove the price of a square foot up and made every shop “artisanal.” It smelled of lemon Pledge and dryer sheets, the artificial sort of clean that irritated the sinuses.

Hux sighed and laid back, bringing the card up to his chest and running his thumbs over the laminated front.

When he’d agreed to be Ben’s husband for a few Christmas pictures, he hadn’t noticed the full name. It was hard to, given the man’s looks and the bizarre nature of his offer. Somehow, it hadn’t even struck him when the card first arrived, the name emblazoned on the envelope, highlighted by the pretty letters of Ben’s handwriting. He had the contents of the letter to blame for that, the image within which made his heart stammer and his cheeks turn red. So, the issue of it all hadn’t set in until weeks later, when he put Solo and Organa together, and when his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.

He hadn’t just gone and wasted an afternoon with some strange boy, playing at spouses, toying with feelings that were best left in the dark. He hadn’t just kissed a stranger who’d promised him twenty dollars to pose in a sweater and then subsequently forgotten to collect the twenty because of how the kiss made him feel. He hadn’t even just stolen Mitaka’s siblings and paraded them around through the thick of the stupidity, abandoning them in a strange backyard so he could swap spit.

He’d done all of that, and he’d done it all with Ben Solo-Organa, son of the former general and current senator who was most set on dissolving the peace between the Order and the Republic, on turning the cold war hot, on eradicating the embassy where he worked and sending him back home to his damp little homeland, alive or otherwise.

Hux looked back into his hands, studying the card. The picture of their kiss made him sigh, eyes softening. Even weeks later, he could still remember how the world broke apart in that moment, Ben’s lips softer than he thought possible, his heart rumbling in his chest like a sputtering engine. It hardly seemed fair that the first man he’d be interested in in years be the son of a woman who loathed everything he stood for. The world wasn’t supposed to take such ludicrous, Shakespearean form. It was supposed to be dull and plain and, best of all, manageable.

He was clever enough to avoid the fearful passage toward death-mark’d love.

And yet, he thought, looking to the image again, there was something almost sublime about an opportunity to continue their game. What sort of sour seed would he plant by attending Leia Organa’s holiday party? Surely she’d suffer in the face of her son on the arm of an Order officer. Perhaps the risk of death would be worth the frown on her lips. Perhaps it’d be worth whatever Ben’s lips could bring.

Hux sighed again and Mitaka sat up, done. “Just kriffing go,” he said, rising to his feet and storming toward Hux. Mitaka nabbed the card from Hux’s hands, his brows furrowed, dark circles crowding beneath his eyes. “I want to sleep, Hux, and you’ve been doing this for hours.”

“But it’d be a horrible idea,” Hux said, sitting up.

Mitaka picked up Hux’s phone and held it out to him, presenting the side of the card with Ben’s number on it. “You clearly want to go,” he said, firmer than Hux had ever heard him. “So go.”

And, like that, it was decided.

 

 

The street leading toward Ben’s house was empty and dark, lined on either side by run-down student housing and fraternities. With all the students back home for break, the street shuddered with loneliness, barren compared to the lit and populated walkways only a few blocks over. Bright strings of light were replaced by untended lawns and muddy gutters, flickering street lamps accompanied only by the moon in lighting Hux’s way. He drove below the speed limit, thumbs tapping against the steering wheel. The road was dark with rainwater and, as much as he knew he was about to crash his own life, he wasn’t quite willing to crash his own car.

Pulling up to Ben’s house, he parked in the driveway, tires rolling over the patches of grass that stuck up through the cracks. The dinged up cars that had crowded the driveway were gone, leaving only Ben’s classic black muscle car and his own, white hybrid.

On the house, the lights of the second floor were lit, fluorescent yellow leaking out into the street. Hux could see one of Ben’s roommates bustling around, their silhouettes dashing in and out of view. He swallowed, considered pulling out of the driveway, and then grabbed his bag and headed toward the front door.  

The closed down frat house dripped, rainwater falling from its patchy shingles. Hux ducked onto the porch, narrowly evading a fat, brown drop of water that had rolled along the crumbling wood. It hit the concrete just as Hux squared off against the door. Without Ben there to open it, the worn wood face was infinitely more intimidating. Surely some other fool had come here before him, coaxed back in the dead of night, only to wind up dead. That was how it worked on television, right? Meet someone online and then die, tragic but inevitable.

Only Ben wasn’t a stranger, this time. They’d met, even if only for a day, and gotten more comfortable with one another than most would recommend in so few hours. His anxiety was paranoid and pointless, just another excuse invented to send him running. Strange, how the rational reasons seemed to vanish, replaced by nonsense. He could have easily left on the grounds that encouraging his nonsensical attraction to an enemy’s son was foolish, and yet he excused it, trying and failing to convince himself Ben was a murderer, instead.

Hux knocked on the door, his knuckles tapping against the cheap wood. If Ben didn’t answer within ten minutes, he’d wisen up and hit the road. Then, he could spend Christmas Eve like he always did; working and eating whatever baked goods Mitaka had left out for him. There would be no risks, just a few extra calories and the slight sting of a lonely evening.

Warm air struck his face as the door opened. Hux looked up, jaw tightening. He was overwhelmed by the massive man that filled the entryway, having forgotten just how broad Ben was in their time apart. Wearing a black turtleneck with a snowman stitched on the front, he looked no different than he had during their silly photoshoot. Hux wondered if he’d erred in opting for civilian clothes. Perhaps the joke would have been better if they’d recreated the photos and he’d come to Christmas in the very uniform his family would love to shred.

“Hey!” Ben said, lighting up bright enough to make up for the street’s lack of decor. “Give me one second here.”

Hux smiled in turn, unsure what to do with his hands as Ben stepped aside to grab his own bag and car keys. Rain was starting to come down outside, a light mist dusting their cars, and Ben clicked his tongue as he stepped out into it. “I hope this doesn’t get worse,” he said, already loading his things up into the trunk of his car. “My car doesn’t handle too well in the rain.”

“Oh? Hux said, his voice hoarse. It felt like he hadn’t spoken in years. He tossed his stuff in the back beside Ben’s, ignoring the amount of garbage collecting in the corners of the trunk. “That is a reassuring idea. Certainly makes me feel great about the journey ahead.” He smirked to himself, closing the trunk as Ben moved toward the driver’s seat.

“I think we’ll be fine,” Ben called back, slipping into the car, shutting the door, and reaching across to open Hux’s. His arms were long enough to allow the motion with ease. Hux was almost impressed by the fluidity of it but, then, he wasn’t going to stoop as low as to let himself be stunned by a door opening. He wasn’t so far gone, even if he’d already slipped far enough to come hang himself like raw meat over Leia Organa’s jaws.

Ben smiled readily as Hux took his seat on the passenger’s side. Hux shut the door and buckled himself in, folding his hands in his lap as Ben started up the engine. “How long did you say the drive was, again?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Ten hours. But you can sleep for most of it,” Ben said, turning back to check the street behind them. He put the car in reverse, stick shift clicking along, and eased them backward onto the road. Once they were righted, the world laid out before them on a string of black asphalt. “I like driving, anyway.”

Pulling down the road, Ben leaned forward and flicked on the radio. The sound came in fuzzy, barely skating through ancient speakers. After a few turns of the dial, holiday songs came drifting through the air, filling the car. Mariah Carey sounded as good as she ever did, though Hux preferred the Rystáll Sant cover.

As they moved past the university, Hux leaned his forehead against the glass, squinting against the dark. In the distance, the school’s bell tower struck out against the sky, the light at the very top bright enough to be a star. It was a good school, the prestigious sort Hux attended himself before taking an officer’s position in the Order. “You aren’t an undergraduate, are you?” he asked, turning back to Ben. “You seem a tad old for it.”

“I’m working on a graduate degree, yeah,” Ben replied. Despite how most would treat getting a higher education at such a fancy school, Ben kept his nose level. He wasn’t here to gloat, though Hux could not see why.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he said, trying to keep the conversation level. He didn’t know what he’d do if they got too strange in the first few minutes of a ten hour trip. Duck and roll, probably. “What in?”

Ben shifted in his seat, scooting closer to the front of it. He seemed cramped against the steering wheel, eyes plastered the the road as he shifted onto the freeway. “Art history. Emphasis on the Imperial period,” he said, quiet. It was hard to hear him over the sound of sleigh bells a’ring ting tingling on the radio.

“So the photography is a hobby, then?” Hux asked, crossing one leg over the other. The road ahead was clear, only a few red tail lights painting the horizon.

“I make a little bit of money shooting graduation photos and weddings around campus, but for the most part, yeah.” The rain picked up and Ben turned on his wipers. They scraped back and forth, rubber bit dragging against the glass. On every backstroke, they squeaked.

“And what about you?” Ben asked, looking over. “What exactly is a man from the Order military doing in the Republic to begin with?”

“Other than encouraging your shenanigans, you mean?”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, other than that.”

There were a lot of moving parts to the story, ones Hux wasn’t sure he was ready to unveil. Every turning cog connected to something else, revealed the beginning of another story and on and on until he was all there, laid out raw, vulnerable to the passing eye. Keeping it simple, then, was the best he could do. “I’m in charge of the armed regiment on the embassy grounds. Nets a higher paycheck, being over here on tense soil.”

A pair of motorcyclists passed them on the right, zipping off into the distance, their engines loud enough to cover the beginning of Silent Night. Hux closed his eyes after they’d gone, resting his cheek against his shoulder. His neck ached almost immediately, but there were few alternatives in a car.

Ben pulled off into the carpool lane. It was just as empty as every other one. “So you’re a colonel, then,” Ben said, glancing from the road for just a second. With his eyes closed, Hux looked peaceful, a strange thing for a man of his nature. Few in the Republic would associate an Order officer with peace, and yet here he was.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a colonel?”

Hux hummed in response, focusing on the patter of rain against the ground outside. “I suppose so.” He opened his eyes, staring out toward the foggy distance, watching as white road lines disappeared beneath the front of the car. “It is to be expected, however. The Order doesn’t have enough old men to fill its officer positions. Not after the war.”

Mariah Carey’s whistle tone cut through the air and they both fell silent. Ben shifted in his seat again, squeezing the steering wheel. Hux thought to try and alleviate the strain, but knew little of de-escalation. No one did, not in this world.

After a mile and a half of holiday music, Ben changed the station to the traffic. There were no cars in sight for as far as either of them could see. The man on the radio confirmed this, but Ben carried on listening. After another half mile, he cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Hux?” he said, turning down the speakers.

Half-asleep, Hux hummed again.

Ben pressed his tongue to roof his mouth, twisting his grip on the steering wheel. “Why did you join the military?”  
  
Hux opened his eyes and turned to Ben, stone-faced. “Do you still want me to play the staunch Order officer for your mother?”

Ben blinked and then said, “Yes.”  
  
“Well, good,” Hux replied, snuggling back against the seat. “Because I joined for the cause.”

 

  
Nine hours and seventeen minutes later, they pulled up to the Solo-Organa household. Hux looked upon it with bleary eyes, nestling a half-melted Mountain Dew® Baja Blast™ Freeze between his thighs. Tucked in a gated community and boasting all the charm of a procedurally produced “family home,” it was decorated with thin strings of white lights that twinkled in the early morning darkness. On the lawn, a large light-up dreidel spun in small circles beside a polar bear, Santa, and his wife. Hux squinted at them, unsure if this was just a strange political ploy by a senator attempting to appear multicultural or a more genuine decorative display.  
  
“So, can you repeat back the story?” Ben asked, unbuckling and opening up the car door. “Because you looked pretty asleep for most of it.”

Hux grumbled and unbuckled, dragging himself out of the vehicle. His legs felt numb beneath him and he gave a few hops to wake up while Ben was rounding the vehicle, unable to see him imitate the Easter Bunny so close to Christmas.

“You repeated it like seven times,” Hux said, sipping on his beverage. The sugar rushing over his tongue made him wrinkle his nose, but that was his fault. He should have known trusting Ben “Smoothies Are an Art Form” Solo-Organa to make his order was foolish. “Of course I can.”

Ben opened the trunk and gathered both of their bags on his back. Poking his head out over the raised trunk, he said, “Well, go on.”

Hux rolled his eyes and padded up to the front door, hugging himself against the morning chill. “Our kids are at my parent’s house; they simply can’t be without my mother at the holidays, who they’re far too attached to. We adopted them together last year and, yes, while it was fast, we don’t regret it at all. We met on your college campus where I was a guest during a lecture on Order-Republic relations. It was love at first sight and our whirlwind romance culminated in a proposal at the Starkiller Ski Lodge.”

“And who proposed?” Ben asked, stepping up onto the porch and leaning over Hux.

Hux’s eyes glinted as the sun started to peak over the horizon. “I did.”

“That isn’t what I-”  
  
“I did,” Hux repeated, stronger, and then rung the doorbell.

A few moments later, the door swung open. The man behind it wasn’t Han Solo and he certainly wasn’t Leia Organa. With his face half obscured by the door frame, he was the tallest man Hux had ever met in person. He seemed primed to snatch the moon from the sky with one, great hand. And perhaps the moon was his pursuit, for his height was emphasized by the dark, thick hair that coated his entire body. Hux could have mistaken him for Big Foot or a werewolf if he weren’t just a little wiser. Everyone knew of Han Solo’s best friend, a giant with hypertrichosis and Old Republic military credentials. He was quite the tabloid subject, back in the day.

Who could forget the scandalous report of him tearing a man's arms clean out of there sockets just for staring?

Not a bright, upstanding member of the Order.  
  
Hux forced a smile.

“Chewie!” Ben shouted, embracing the giant without pause. They made an odd pair, Ben’s big nose pressed against Chewbacca’s fur, the giant somehow making even Ben seem minuscule.

Hux tried to keep himself from staring, his internal voyeur desperate to turn and gawk. When Chewbacca pulled back and started speaking a gruff, guttural language Hux couldn’t understand, Hux felt his own hairs prickle. There was nothing quite like being cut out of a conversation.

Ben responded in the same unfamiliar tongue, laughing as Chewbacca set a hand on his head. Hux squinted at them before jumping, a vice grip having caught his leg. Looking down, he found a smaller version of Chewbacca staring up at him.

His fake smile shattered.

It wasn’t so much that the hypertrichosis was unsettling. Rather, there was a strange child touching him, one lacking the proper upbringing of Order youth. His mind jumped to all the horrifying places the boy could have been. To the horrifying things he might have touched or, Maker forbid, eaten. In an instant, he felt like screaming.

But Ben was there to rescue him, prying the child off Hux and coddling him against his chest. “Hey, Lumpy,” he said, and all of Hux’s scorn turned to pity. Lumpy was a horrific name, particularly for a child destined to face stigma and bias. Had his father meant to torment him? Clearly Chewbacca was more disturbed than he’d initially suspected.

Lumpy hugged Ben’s face and laughed. “Ben!” he chirped in return, kicking his legs back and forth. The boy couldn’t have been much older than six or seven but, then, Hux wasn’t very good at determining age through a curtain of hair. “Merry Chrismanukkah!”  
  
“Merry Chrismanukkah, buddy,” Ben replied, handing Lumpy off to his father. Chewbacca accepted him into his arms and, together, they made a striking pair.

Although Hux had thought himself prepared for Ben’s idiosyncrasies, the word “Chrismanukkah” struck him hard enough to quirk his head off to one side. He supposed it made sense of the decor, though it hardly meant sense of itself. Was there really any answer in something that provided just as many new questions?

Before he could ask however - and he wasn’t even sure he should ask, given the possible repercussions of questioning what appeared to be a religious amalgamation - Chewbacca’s eyes turned to him. And, through all the hair, they narrowed.

Turning on his heel, Chewbacca ducked back inside, vanishing through the tinsel-framed door. Lumpy remained despite his father’s departure, giggling in his “cousin Ben’s” arms. Hux might have called it cute if it weren’t for the growing feeling that Mitaka had been a fool to send him here. As Ben beckoned him inside, he wondered how he could modify his coats to accommodate the pending loss of his limbs.  
  
Inside, the house smelled of roasting chestnuts and a floral Glade air freshener that almost convinced Hux he had soap in his mouth. It was a rotten clash of scents made out of the best intentions and he pursed his lips, waiting for the aromatic trauma to pass.

As Ben set their bags in the hall closet, Hux scanned the room for any signs of his inevitable murderer. When would the great and terrifying Leia Organa appear to face him? Would she arise from gift-wrapped boxes around the tree, draped in ribbon and death?

The living room laid out before him, squeaky clean and pleasant, cut straight out of the pages of Better Homes & Gardens. The sectional couch, with its dark brown leather and carefully placed cream throw pillows, squeaked as Ben collapsed upon it, Lumpy jumping up right beside him. Chewbacca went off without another sound, vanishing into the kitchen to deal with the source of the nutty aroma. At the same time, Ben patted the seat beside himself, smirking.

Hux sat down, staring down his own, dulled reflection in the large television that faced them. “I think the rest of my family is out getting last minute ingredients for dinner and collecting themselves,” Ben said, resting his elbow on Lumpy’s head as he grabbed the remote. “They’ll probably slowly trickle in until about five or six.”  
  
“Eight for Uncle Lando,” Lumpy added, drawing a laugh from Ben.

“More like eighty thirty, but I can’t blame him. I’m sure my dad wouldn’t make it the party until the next day if it wasn’t for the fact that my mom drags him here by his shirt collar,” Ben shot back, and the giggle fits continued.

A chill-- something like Jack Frost showing up and licking each one of his fingers--started in Hux’s hands. He sat back, silent, and allowed their shared laughter to creep into his head. On the dark screen, the empty space around him came alive. It defined his edges and theirs, which were so mingled now, as they snuggled and rolled together.

They were cute together, Ben and Lumpy. Familial, despite the sharp contrast in their appearance. Their expressions, with closed eyes and open smiles, spoke to years and years of Chrismanukkahs, rolling back in time as far as Hux could imagine them. He wondered, then, where his place was in all this. What odd juncture did his presence occupy? Where did he fit in among the mish-mashed decor and comfortable knowledge of their family’s screwy sense of punctuality? How many times had Ben Solo-Organa dragged some stranger here under these same pretense, seeking nothing but the thrill of his family’s disapproval?

Hux jerked back as the screen came to life, an ABC Family commercial blaring about the 25 Days of Christmas film to follow. His dull-faced reflection was replaced by a cartoon of Santa Claus waving his hand, mouth unmoving as a jolly “Ho Ho Ho” rung out from the speakers. Still, the glare showed the narrowing his own eyes, the curl of his lips against his own reaction.

“Hey.”

Ben scooted toward his side, filling the gap between them. His arm came around Hux’s waist, pulling him close, fingers curled against his hip. In time, the flimsy plastic cup containing the sloshy, green remnants of Hux’s Mountain Dew® Baja Blast™ Freeze squeaked and crumpled, choked by the flex of Hux’s fingers.

“What are your feelings on the Nightmare Before Christmas?” Ben asked, freehand flipping to the TV’s Netflix app.

As the screen turned red, center occupied by the white letters of the Netflix logo, Hux swallowed. He fixed his attention the spot between Ben’s eyes and worked his fingers around the straw of his beverage, bending it back and forth until the plastic paled and weakened. It was an inconsequential little question, but the expectant look on Ben’s face-- and Lumpy’s, as far as Hux could discern --made the muscles of his back tense.

It had nothing to do, of course, with the way Ben’s thigh was pressed firmly against his own, his fingers petting his hipbone through the fabric of his shirt. Movie selection, particularly at an event of such familial significance, was simply of the greatest possible importance. Hux could not stand to disappoint. Not when so much was on the line.

“Isn’t that a Halloween film?” Hux managed to say, forcing it from his lips before drinking the watered down, food color filled syrup in his hands became a more viable option than speaking.  
  
There are times in life when we say something we feel is so innocuous, so bland, that we cannot even fathom what a poor response might look like. Our confidence assures us that we are safe, even as we stick our hand in the lion’s maw, and we go on assuming all is well. Robert Jervis, whose theories on warfare circulated the sorts of agitated political spaces Hux thrived in, might have called it a tragic misperception. Machiavelli, whose books nestled somewhere in Hux’s bookshelf, might have called it the inevitable failure of a man’s virtue in the face of fortune. But regardless of the label, Hux had thrown himself straight into it. He’d made a misstep of the greatest proportions.

Lumpy gasped and Ben’s face, so well-decorated with a smile, fell to the tides of disappointment. “A Halloween movie?” he said, pulling his arm back from Hux and raising it in front of his chest in defense. “But Jack learns about the spirit of Christmas at the end!”

The raised pitch of Ben’s tone, like that yelp of a wounded animal, made Hux flinch. “Yes, well, there are skeletons and vampires and the like. That makes it a Halloween film, doesn’t it?”  
  
“No.” Ben set Lumpy aside, requiring both his arms for the level of gesturing he was about to engage in. “A Halloween film is scary or creepy. A Christmas film has a message about giving, family, and friendship. The Nightmare Before Christmas has a significantly greater emphasis on Jack growing as a person and learning about the real meaning of Christmas than it does about any of the spooky aesthetics.”

Hux narrowed his eyes and stuck out a finger, holding it in front of Ben’s nose. “Well, what about the Scary Godmother movie?”  
  
Ben blinked. “The what?”  
  
“The Scary Godmother movie, Scary Godmother: A Halloween Spooktakular.”  
  
Like an accelerated slideshow of the stages of trauma, Ben’s face shifted a good seven times in one second before settling on a pinched brow and squinting eyes. “You mean that badly animated TV movie with the witch?”  
  
Hux nodded.  
  
“And the weird little boy in the devil pajamas or whatever?”

“That’s right,” Hux said, sticking up his nose. “What about that movie.”  
  
“What _about_ that movie?” Ben repeated, unable to find a foothold in whatever strange line of argument Hux was dragging from the depths.

“Well,” Hux started, rising from his place on the couch. He turned and raised his arms, chest spread wide, posture military straight. “That movie meets all of the criteria you give for a Christmas film while lacking any mention of Christmas. It sees the characters go on a journey and the emphasis is on the values they learn together, namely about sharing and being good members of a friend group and family. By all counts, then, it should qualify as a Christmas film, but it clearly isn’t!”  
  
Hux raised his hand, counting off on his fingers. “There is no Santa, snow, or Christmas gift exchanges. It has all the values of a Christmas film but only a madman would call it one. By the same merit, The Nightmare Before Christmas isn’t a Christmas film either.”  
  
Ben jumped from his seat, grabbing Hux by the wrist of his counting hand. “Those values are universally applicable to any kid’s film!” he shot back. “You know that isn’t a fair comparison to draw.”  
  
“Aha!” Hux replied, pressing the pointer finger of his free hand to Ben’s sternum. “But if those values are universal to any kid’s film, then the Nightmare Before Christmas isn’t automatically a Christmas film for containing them. That leaves us with only aesthetics to differentiate and, insofar as bats and spiders outnumber snow and Santa,  the Nightmare Before Christmas is clearly a Halloween movie!”  
  
Hux panted, having spat the last few words out too fast for his lungs to keep up. His eyes were locked on Ben’s, gaze switching between either eye as he tried to recenter himself. In the same instance, Ben tightened his hold on Hux’s wrist, not hard enough to hurt but still firm enough to convey a magnitude of presence.  
  
“You’re wrong,” Ben said, expressionless outside the intensity of his eyes. It was not quite like anger, not as far as Hux could tell. But it weighed similarly and, just as well, made Hux feel a quickening fight or flight or…

“Can we just watch the movie?” Lumpy called, throwing himself down against the couch cushions with a huff. His interruption-- and it was an interruption -- unlocked their eyes and sent them sputtering apart, swirling away from each other and toward the far sides of the room.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben said, clearing his throat and smoothing his hair down with his hand. He returned to the couch after pacing the side of the couch for a few seconds, grabbing the remote and fumbling with the shaky Netflix TV keyboard. He turned out the lights with a long-armed reach to the switch, leaving Hux to stare from a dark corner.  
  
As the film played, screen light catching the highpoints of Ben’s face and leaving him like the brooding hero of some old Hollywood noir, Hux remained in place. From his corner, he could see both Ben and the door, with Lumpy traipsing around between them. He set one hand to his own chest and rubbed the fabric of his shirt between his pointer finger and thumb. As Jack began his lonely song in the graveyard, he took a seat at Ben’s side.

The movie carried on and, as Jack found his way out into the snowy wonder of Christmas Town, Ben’s arm found its way over Hux’s shoulders. Hux folded in without a word, laying his head against his fake husband’s arm, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. As Jack sang, Hux could not help but concur - what _is_ this?

Somewhere near the three-quarter mark, when Hux had already started to succumb to road trip fatigue, Ben leaned close and brought his lips to Hux’s ear. “Disneyland only adds Jack Skellington to the Haunted Mansion at Christmas time, you know,” he whispered, his smirk unseen but palpable.

Hux shoved his fist against Ben’s chest, snickering. “Oh, shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That face when you release a holiday fanfic update four, almost five months late but you're in your last year of college and writing a thesis is hard. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. The Secret of Home Town Buffet

A train stretched down the snowy street, the steam from its stack clouding around it, broken only by the warm yellow light of its cars. Distantly, a voice called, “All aboard!” as the phantom figure of a man pressed through the rolling mist. As he grew closer to the young boy walking the length of the train, his identity became apparent. CGI train conductor Tom Hanks raised a brow, a lantern dangling from his hand. “Well, you coming?” he asked. Before the boy could properly ask to where, CGI Tom Hanks announced, “Why, to the North Pole of course! This is the Polar Express!”  
  
Hux switched off the TV, returning the living room to darkness. Lumpy’s gentle snoring replaced Tom Hank’s voice, and Ben grumbled at the change in lighting. Hux was still cuddled up to his fake husband’s side, head laid over his shoulder. In the last six hours, he’d been forced to consume a myriad of insufferable Christmas films, their feel-good format drilling a gingerbread man shaped hole in his cerebral cortex. His body felt like taffy, all gooey and impossible to peel off the couch’s leather upholstery. Nevertheless, he had his limits, and one of them happened to be the Uncanny Valley passed off as a motion-capture holiday movie.  
  
“What’s up?” Ben slurred. He rubbed at one eye with his hand, having fallen into halfway sleep somewhere in the third act of The Muppet Christmas Carol. Outside, the sun had long since set, dipping behind the hills with perfect knowledge of the disastrous party about to unfold.

“Are your parents ever going to show, Ben, or did you bring me all the way out here to watch television?” Hux asked, brow creasing in the middle. “Because I could very well have done that from my own couch, you know.”  
  
“My god,” Ben returned, leaning in once again to whisper in Hux’s ear. “Keeping up the husband routine even when there's no one around. You’ve really gotten committed to this nagging bit, haven’t you?”  
  
A laugh erupted from Ben’s chest and Hux growled, tugging away from his “spouse” and leaning against the couch’s arm instead. Who did Ben think he was, sitting over there and laughing his ass off over something so innocuous? His smile was torturous, a sure reminder than Mitaka’s advice was always unfounded and that this trip served no real purpose, in the end.  
  
And, just as Hux was gearing up to declare that he hadn’t adored being dragged along to cuddle and watch Kermit the Frog, purpose slammed open the front door and came pouring in with cacophonous glee.

The Queen came first, three fools trailing behind her with uproarious chatter. Leia Organa made an entrance like a bullet through a bullseye, impressive and terrifying all at once. She was wearing a bright blue sweater with a menorah and snowflakes stitched on the front, but even so Hux was awestruck. Han, Luke, and Lando were mere afterthoughts, blurred at the edges of Hux’s vision as his attention fixed on Leia. She saw him, acknowledged him, and, in the greatest power play since Sheev Palpatine weaseled his way into the Prime Minister’s seat, charged across the room to ensnare him in a hug.  
  
His blood ran cold as she pulled him close, her festive perfume singeing the inside of his nostrils. She held him closer than any of his nannies ever had, and that alone was enough to make him curse his own hubris. Leia Organa was no ordinary foe. His presence alone would not cripple her own unseat her perfect little holiday party. No. With one embrace, she’d redefined the terms. This was a war of weapons of mass destruction, no different than the rigid stand off there two nations faced in the day to day.

“Ben, you didn’t say he was so handsome,” Leia said, digging the dagger deeper. “How on earth did you bribe him into marrying you?”  
  
The answer was twenty undelivered dollars, but neither Ben nor Hux had the gall to make that announcement. “Mother, I sent you photos! You knew what he looked like before he got here,” Ben said, rising to meet his uncle’s outstretched arms. Based on the guttural grumble that rolled out from the kitchen, Han and Lando were presenting their long overdue food delivery to Chewbacca - and getting quite an earful for it.

Hux pulled back from Leia, applying his best Boy Scout’s of the Republic smile and holding her forearms with perfectly calculated reverence. “You’re too kind, Senator,” he said, standing from his place on the couch just as Lumpy rushed off to check on the dessert options. Hux continued, taking one hand away to sweep across the room. “Stereotypical as this, I have to say I love the decor. It is so charmingly _eclectic_ ; very much in the spirit of Republican multiculturalism.”

The hum that escaped Leia was like a slap to the face. She released Hux, turning to inspect her mixture of holiday whimsy. “Yes, it has been years in the making. I always try to pick something new up every time the Boxing Day sales come around,” she said, moving to flick the living room lights back on. As the fluorescent glow struck Hux’s eyes, forcing him to squint, so did Leia turn back to him, her own face creased with a smile. “And no need to be so formal, Officer Hux. Leia is just fine...if Mother won’t do.”

Hux could not hide the wince that overcame him. His muscles ground against each other as his grin grew criminally rigid. “Of course, Leia,” he replied, already shrinking back towards Ben’s side. He looped an arm around his ‘spouse,’ tugging the man’s attention away from his uncle. “I’ll do my best to overcome my military habits. It just proves so difficult, especially in this day and age.”

She nodded, “I do know how those habits can _linger._ ”

A pit of fire opened up between them, vast and hot enough to melt any sign of a White Chrismanukkah. Just as magma and demons threatened to flood the room, Luke Skywalker clapped, breaking the spell. “Hey, how about we start on that gingerbread house right about now!”

Ben pointed a finger at his uncle. “I’ll sign on in favor of that.”

The first round ended the second Hux was shackled with a squeezy tube of frosting and sat beside Lumpy at the side of disassembled gingerbread manor. Leia’s victory was absolute, evident as her joy as she sorted through the rolls Chewbacca had made. Hux wrinkled his nose, drawing little frosting flowers along the bottom of the gingerbread walls. So, she’d bested him early. It didn’t matter. If there was anything he knew how to do, it was Strike Back.

His stewing was interrupted by a curse to his left. Looking over, he found Ben’s too-big hands fumbling over the broken pieces of a cookie roof panel. He was biting his lower lips, struggling to align the snapped pieces.

On instinct, Hux reached over, steadying Ben’s hands with his own. “Relax,” he whispered, unaware of the sudden spike in blood pressure he was causing. “If you keep fussing like that you’re just going to break it more.”

The pieces came together, frosting bubbling up at the juncture where Ben had applied it as glue. Hux kept his hands in place, waiting for the bind to set. His gaze was fixed firmly to the joining until he felt a stare against his skin. Looking up, he found Ben watching him, his wide-eyed wonder enough to snatch the air from Hux’s lungs.

They regarded each other in silence, the Solo-Organas and friends working all around them as their own little worlds froze. Hux wondered if he had something on his face and then, deep in the evil crevices of his mind, if he dared to indulge this standoff. Their first kiss had felt very much like this, his heartbeat drowning out the ambiance, his tongue falling dry in his mouth. It had served a performative purpose, crafting a more believable holiday card for Ben’s witless family. Leaning in now would do the same, affirming their ‘love’ for one another by showcasing a raw, ‘organic’ moment of affection.

And oh, how Leia would squirm.

Hux pressed their lips together, earning a light gasp from Ben. The warmth of Ben’s lips set a million butterflies aflight in Hux’s stomach - a sure sign of the satisfaction besting Leia would bring and absolutely nothing more. Relishing in it, Hux weighed breaking and deepening the kiss. What was the fastest way to break Leia’s heart - adorable chastity or an aggressive use of tongue? The louder some secret, gremlin voice called for tongue, the more certain he became in the adorable. Pulling away, he smiled at Ben, doing his best to ignore the perfect little flush painted over the man’s cheeks.

He wasn’t wearing one to match, of course. Redheads are naturally susceptible to redness. It was a simple case of biology.

Before them, the mended cookie lay in pieces again, Ben’s fingers having squeezed it too tight. Their eyes found the shattered pieces together, Hux’s hands still set atop Ben’s own. Distantly, Lumpy was whining, demanding Luke reprimand Ben for being gross. Further beyond that, Leia lingered, her face most certainly set in a frown.

“Sorry,” Hux whispered, pulling his hands back to his lap as the cookie shards fell into increasing ruin. Ben shrugged his shoulders.

“Why are you sorry?” he asked, setting the mangled roof tile atop the gingerbread manor. The pieces stood up at awkward, jagged angles, at odds with the otherwise charming home. “Now it’s avant garde.”

Hux blinked, studying the damaged cookie. Turning his head, he spotted one of the many spare pieces Chewbacca had baked. “Well, wait. We have this right here,” Hux mumbled, reaching out for the spare. As his fingers graced its surface, Ben caught Hux’s wrist.

“It’s fine,” Ben said, drawing Hux’s fingers back. He brought them toward his lips, pressing a little kiss against the tip of Hux’s middle finger. “Like, I said, it’s avant garde.”

“Right…,” Hux breathed. Watching Ben nuzzle his hand, Hux was overcome by a great sense of melancholy. How much the world had lost when Ben decided to become an art historian. He would have served much better as an actor, feigning love well enough to make even broken hearts swell.

The gingerbread house came together like a cheap boy band. It had something for everyone - cutesy flowers, realistically rendered trees, elegant double doors, the “avant garde”- but the disparate pieces left each viewer unimpressed when they came together as a whole. It seemed indecisive, unable to craft a proper identity in the face of its menagerie assemblage.

Not that it mattered, much. Han and Lumpy set about devouring the construction the second Lando laid down the last cookie inhabitant, tearing the poor thing to shreds. Ben joined in on the carnage, decapitating the gingerbread dog with his teeth before offering the dog’s owner to Hux.

“Go ahead,” Ben said, snickering in anticipation of his own humor. “If you don’t join in, we might mistake your ginger head for gingerbread.”  
  
Hux scoffed and accepted the gingerbread man, nibbling at its arm. “Am I safe now?”  
  
A laugh cut across the table. Lando Calrissian dropped a dreidel where the remnants of the gingerbread house lay. “Only for now, boy,” he said, pointing across the table. “Because you’re about to experience the most sacred Chrismanukkah tradition.”  
  
Han slapped a hand down. “Excessive gambling.”

Leia rushed over from the kitchen, abandoning Chewbacca with the roast. “Now hold on,” she said, latching onto Han’s shoulders like an eagle burying its talons in a fish. “We aren’t repeating last year’s incident. No bets outside gelt and I mean the chocolate gelt.” She held up a finger, narrowing her eyes at Lando. “I won’t have you two swapping our Ford Falcon back and forth anymore. The car is too old for the strain of it.”

Lando and Han went to complain but, before either man- both legendary figures in their own right -could spare a word, Leia silenced them with a wave of her hand. They deflated with grumbles, shoulders sinking even lower as Leia fetched golden chocolate coins from the kitchen cabinet. She took a seat and doled out ten to each person at the table. Immediately, Lumpy started unwrapping his candy, going to eat it and then winding up with Luke’s hand in his face.

“You can get more if you wait,” Luke said, winking. Lumpy’s eyes widened a little and then he nodded, setting his near-mangled chocolate down on the table.

The game started before Hux could ask for the rules. Fortunately, it seemed to be rather self explanatory. You spun and either won, won big, lost, or got skipped over, depending on where the dreidel lie after it finished its turning. Leia took the first turn, ending it with the modest victory of one new chocolate coin from the center pool. She punctuated her little win by shooting Hux a smirk.

Hux set his jaw. So, this was how it was going to be. Chocolate coins for his life.  
  
So be it.  
  
As they each took their turns, trading power in Ghiradelli, Luke brought the unspoken to light. “So, when are we going to get the story out of you two, over there?”  
  
Ben opened his mouth and Hux stole the words out of it. “We fell in love just like anyone else does,” Hux said, sorting his little stack of chocolate. “With the impending war of our states as a backdrop. I was speaking at his college about Republic-Order relations, he invited me for tacos, and I fell in love with him the second he brought out the bathroom soap dispenser because he thought it looked cool.”  
  
The addition of a real life detail made Hux’s chest tighten. Of course he hadn’t fallen in love with Ben when he carried that soap dispenser out. He’d only found him slightly more charming and started to acknowledge that there was a world where a million moles could be attractive. Still, Ben laid an arm over his shoulder as he spoke, pulling him close as if he appreciated the reference.  
  
Leia, on the other hand, suffered the first chip in her armor. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call war impending,” she said, taking her turn. The dreidel fell on a loss and she licked the front of her teeth, tossing a coin back into the center pool. “Things have been rather peaceful, haven’t they? That is why you are in this country at all. If war was looming so close on the horizon, you wouldn’t have an embassy to serve at.”  
  
“I suppose that is true,” Hux returned, setting his chin atop his hand. He sharpened his tongue, lashing out with an almost lazy tone. “Though, I do think there was recently a petition to close that embassy, wasn’t there? In fact, I do believe you were one of the chief signatories, Leia.”  
  
Darth Vader appeared before Hux, his wheezing gasps audible in Leia’s forced laughter. Hux half expected Leia to reach out and snatch his throat, squeezing it closed like her father was so famous for. “Well, that is true,” Leia stated. “That is true.”  
  
Round two came to its end, closed off in the same way as the first. Luke clapped his hands and laughed calling for a change in mood.  
  
“Hey, where are the kids! Lumpy here was really excited to meet them. He’s been real  lonely ever since Ben here decided he was too big for the kid’s table,” he said, earning a scoff from Ben.  
  
“We couldn’t drag them from their other grandmother’s side. She spoils them rotten with cake and toys,” Ben explained, taking his turn and pulling the full pile of center coins toward himself. “And Erel is terribly anxious, you know. It wouldn’t have been right to make the poor little guy travel so far. Would have made his Chrismanukkah unfairly upsetting.”  
  
Spoiled with cake and toys. Hux could have laughed himself to death. He’d been part of making up that excuse, and yet it felt more phony than CGI Tom Hanks had looked. When had his mother ever spoiled anyone? More importantly, when had his mother been involved in any holiday, let alone Christmas or Hanukkah or their bizarre bastard child?  
  
Never, that’s when.

The game passed by with idle chatter and lies. Yes, Ben and Hux shared the most lovely apartment near campus. Yes, they’d honeymooned on the beaches of Scarif. Yes, the resorts there weren’t quite as radioactive as they used to be. Nuclear blasts cleared up a little bit over thirty years, making for wonderfully reduced hotel prices and only a mild concern of matrimonial mutation.

When the chocolate chips fell where they would, it was Lando who wound up with all the gelt. He snickered and pulled the coins close, ignoring Han’s muttered swears. “All in a day's work,” he said, unwrapping a single coin before passing the stack over to Lumpy. The little guy brightened up and dug in, stopped only by a gruff call from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Lumpy,” Ben added, once again amazing Hux with his ability to understand Chewbacca’s wholly unintelligible speech. “Don’t spoil your dinner.”

The boy gave a huff and dropped his chocolates, hopping down from his seat and wandering into the kitchen to see when he might be free to gorge himself. The others followed suit, breaking away from the table to go about their business. Only Ben remained, his arm still laid over Hux’s shoulders like an incredibly ripped feather boa.

“This is going really well,” Ben whispered, stealing one chocolate coin from Lumpy’s abandoned pile and tearing it open with his teeth. “You see my mom’s face there? I could barely keep myself from cackling.”

Hux nodded. “She sure did seem upset,” he said, wondering if he should pull away now that everyone was gone or remain tucked against Ben’s side. He decided on the latter, if only because Ben served as a rather impressive heater in what was a decidedly cold house.

Sure, the thermostat across the way read 72° F/22 **°** C, but what did that matter? Hux had poor circulation. This was entirely justifiable.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, waiting for a nod before carrying on. “Why are you trying to stir up trouble here? I mean, I suppose it is funny, but I can’t really see how that appeal outweighs the risk of being scolded. And what the kriff is Chrismanukkah, anyway? It is Christmas Eve, why are you celebrating partial Hanukkah?”

Ben’s arm pulled away, the warmth at Hux’s side lost as Ben stood up and stretched his legs out. “My mom and uncle were raised in different households. Mom came up Jewish, uncle came up Christian, but they wanna celebrate together now that they’re reunited and all. Whole family is made of pretty busy people and most folks get Christmas off easier than Hanukkah, so we just do both now, you know? It’s our little solution.”

Hux hummed and looked down at his lap. “That is more wholesome than what I expected,” Hux replied, driving a quirk into Kylo’s brow.  
  
“What were you expecting?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Hux said, giving a shrug. “For your mom to be playing the field for votes.”

Ben laughed in return and then excused himself to the kitchen, ready to scarf down some beef brisket and kugel. Hux, left to his own devices, was more than keenly aware of his newest loss. Ben, ever his father’s son, had smooth talked his way right out of answering half the damn question.

 

The Solo-Organas and their companions returned to the dining room ten minutes later with platefuls of food and the nine-pronged hanukiah. They found Hux shoving his phone in his pocket, leaving a message to Mitaka half-written as: “This is the weirdest night of my life. If things go awry, I’m going to come home and.” His butt sent it forward without his knowledge and, miles away, Mitaka faced paralyzing anticipation.

Per usual, his terror would not be abated.

Han placed the hanukiah at the center of the table and the food was quick to follow. Dishes both new and familiar to Hux swarmed around, their scent stirring a hunger he hadn’t realized was there. As he inched closer to a tempting looking noodle casserole, Ben plopped back at his side, once against wrapping an arm around him. Somewhere along the line, its place had moved from his shoulder to his waist, though Hux was too distracted to care.

He was entirely unconscious of the way Ben’s hand was resting against his stomach, arm cradling him so close. Truly and wonderfully oblivious to it, really.

Luke dimmed the lights as Leia placed the candles into the hanukiah, lining them up from left to right and leaving one empty holder empty. A moment later, Han emerged from the kitchen with a very small, beeswax candle. It hard clearly been burning for a long while already, wax droplets crowding its sides. He passed this candle off to Leia, who held it away from her body and regarded it with reverence.

She started with blessings, the family chasing her words with gentles Amens. Hux missed the first round of affirmation, but joined in on the second. At his side, Ben’s eyes were gently closed, his head bowed in quiet piety. All around, the family seemed to still, their exuberance replaced with an almost soothing calm. Even Lumpy, the rambunctious little cretin, had fallen still, his little eyes shut behind all this hair, his hands clasped firmly over his lap.

The Order was not without religious tradition. It had a church, one whose esteemed Leader was tied most closely to the political realm. The Republic had the gall to call them theocratic over the arrangement, though anyone willing to look would see how easily religion warped the supposedly democratic processes of the Republican Senate. Still, Hux had not come up particularly religious. His father was a man of the book, but only insofar as he respected religion's ability to sway the masses and craft unquestioningly devout followers. In their home, the good book was only as good as it was useful.

So he had no name for the warm, soft feeling that draped over his shoulders, swaddling him close. He could only hold his breath as it overcame him, carried along by the hymn that followed the prayers. The candles flickered, all nine just enough to illuminate the faces of those around him. Ben’s hand found his own and grasped, their fingers interlacing. So caught up in all that was going on. Hux could only squeeze back.

Was Ben mad, Hux wondered. What illness justified trying to ruin this? This perfect little family, all huddled close together, rejoicing in their religious and company simultaneously. What could have possibly driven him to bring Hux here as a wrench in joyous plans? And how wicked had he been, himself, in coming along? Foe or not, this was special. He had never before understood the tradition of stopping a war on Christmas. Respecting a silly holiday and forgoing strategic advantage had seemed a fool’s game. But now, he saw the inhumanity of it. Christmas, Hanukkah...even their mutant amalgamation....

There was something worth preserving, here. Something too beautiful to exchange for a few miles in gained ground.

Dinner passed in a haze, not unlike the smoke that had obscured the Polar Express. Potatoes and green beans rotating around the table in the company of rapid chatter. Hux kept himself silent by stuffing his face, answering whatever spare question came his way as quickly as possible. As the festivities continued to grow, his heart sunk deeper and deeper into his gut. If all of this was beautiful, then his presence was only ugly. Even silent, he was thorn in this family’s side, part of some grotesque joke meant to rattle their sensibilities. But what could be done about that? Nothing. A single word of the truth would only sour things more, demonstrating Ben’s cruel streak at an otherwise perfect event.

And that would be a great loss, indeed. Revealing Ben was the same as losing him forever, and the thought of that made Hux’s teeth dig into his fork.

Perhaps this confusion would pass and he’d come back to his senses in a moment. Then he could laugh and relish in Leia’s discomfort again, ruining this little party just as he’d intended do. But the more Hux wished for that, the less possible it seemed. Looking around the table, he was struck by the foreignness of the emotions around him. Where had his Christmanukkah been, all his life? As Han set a hand on Leia’s shoulder, giving a gruff “I love you,” in exchange for one of her sharp jokes, Hux was struck by a burning sensation behind his eyes.

The legs of his chair screamed against the wood as Hux stood up. “I need a cigarette,” he said, rushing out the front door.

It was only when he was forced to release Ben’s hand that he realized he’d still been holding it.

  


The outside air was crisp and biting. Despite the bright glow of the neighborhood, streets illuminated by the bulbs of a million string lights, the roads were ghost empty. Hux sat down on the porch, burying his face in his hands as he chased breathes that seemed to come fewer and farther between. “Fuck,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes closed tight.

He and his father had only ever shared one holiday meal. They’d spent it at HomeTown Buffet, squeezed in a dirty booth between hot plates of stale pasta and slop-like food. Looking out across the restaurant, young Hux had found the answer to Paul McCartney’s age old question:  “All the lonely people; where do they all come from?”

The answer was Home Town Buffet on Christmas Eve. Every soul was alone, shambling between the frozen yogurt dispenser and spoiled salad bar. They were men, for the most part. Lonely truckers, isolated divorcees, drug addicts whose parents had finally said, “Don’t come around anymore.” They had nowhere but Home Town Buffet and it's too-pink ham, their eyes glazed over as, just outside, the holiday spirit waited to mock them.

Somewhere along the line, or perhaps all along, he’d become one of those men. Not in the sense of unwashed shirts and alimony woes, but in the isolation. He’d grown beyond the otherworldly flicker of Home Town Buffet’s fluorescent lights and jumped right to answering bizarre Facebook ads seeking just a little smidgen of company. And now, surrounded by an excess of that so-long desired company, he could only feel the ache of all the years that came before.

The door opened behind him. Without a word, Ben sat down at his side. Hux refused to look up at him, choosing instead to hunker down and bury his face further in his hands.  
  
The wind howled overhead. Or maybe it was laughing, pleased at long last to see a man who’d so long stood against its forces bend and falter.  
  
Ben rubbed his feet back and forth against the driveway, the bottom of his dress shoes scratching against the concrete. “You don’t look like you’re smoking,” he said, twisting his head up to regard the starless sky. “Mind if I ask what’s up?”  
  
“I do mind,” Hux shot back. The harshness of his own voice made him flinch and he cleared his throat, dropping his hands to his lap. “Sorry, I just...I don’t even smoke.”

“If you don’t want to tell me why you ran out here, you don’t have to. I mean, maybe you just really hate fried fish. I know that stuff can disagree with me sometimes,” Ben said, putting on a smile that almost seemed to make things better.

Almost.  
  
“No, but really,” Ben continued, getting up from the porch and walking a little bit further out into the driveway. Tall as he was, he could have stood there and blocked out the moon, stealing all the light from the world spare what could be laid out on string. Instead, he basked in the light, his hands his pockets, his head tipped so he might drink it all in. “I’m supposed to be your husband, right? At least for tonight, I have to look out for you.”

Hux, a man of a million words, felt each one tangle up in his throat. All knotted together, they came out as a sob. He curled further in on himself, not crying but boiling over inside with something he dare not describe. “That’s it,” he said, forcing the words out between his teeth. “That’s it right there.”  
  
By the time Ben turned back around, his brows raised, Hux was upon him. He grabbed at the front of Ben’s shirt, tugging him close, his breathe escaping in a long hiss. “I don’t understand you!” Hux shouted, fingers knotting in the shirt’s cloth. “Why did you bring me here? Why did you put up that ad in the first place? A joke is one thing, but this is madness. You have this adorable little family in there and you’ve dragged me all this way and thrown me in their midst, sure to ruin everything.” Hux shook his head, bowing his back. His words came out slower, each imbued with the full weight of his feelings.  
  
“Tell me, Ben,” he said, “Are you insane or just sadistic? No matter how I think it over, I can’t understand. What are you looking for? No one goes this far for a laugh. Not when so much good is on the line.”

Ben’s expression hardened. His brows fell to a furrow and he frowned, though Hux couldn’t read him as angry even if he tried. No. There was something else there. Ben looked like a well respected man admitting his crimes and stepping down, just barely navigating the tightrope stretched over his onlookers disappointment and distaste.

But, when words came again, they were harsher than Hux was prepared to deal with. “Are you stupid?” came flying from Ben’s lips, scraping along Hux’s ears and burrowing in his heart. Ben sighed and pulled Hux’s hands off his chest, leaving them to dangle in the air. He shook his head and refused to meet Hux’s eyes, staring back at the light yellow glow from the house windows instead.  
  
“There is nothing adorable about what was going on in there,” Ben muttered, almost whispered. Hux could have been on another planet for as much as Ben was staring past him, transfixed on passing shadows in the window, the mere implication of his family. His eyes seemed to reflect the light too much; Hux inhaled as he realized they were glossed over with tears.  
  
“Tell me,” Hux said, taking one of Ben’s hand between both of his own. “It’s okay.”  
  
Ben’s Adam's apple bobbed and he closed his eyes, forehead drawn up in creases. “They believed this, Hux,” he said, voice wavering. “They believed we got married years ago and that we’ve got two kids they’ve never even met. Despite this stinking so much of bullshit, they bought it without a second thought.”  
  
Hux’s eyes flew wide and, before Ben could say another word, Hux had moved in to wrap his arms around him. He squeezed tight, tighter still when Ben craned down to bury his face in the pocket of Hux’s shoulder and neck.

Hux couldn’t be sure how long Ben had been estranged from his family, or even still what the estrangement had concerned. But in the choked sob Ben provided, Hux heard the quiet shuffle of the men at the Home Town Buffet. He heard himself, cracking open a bottle of wine on the first anniversary of his father’s death, getting shitfaced, and answering an ad on Facebook for a twenty dollar pay-out on absolute madness.

"It’s alright,” Hux said, struggling to support Ben’s collapsing weight but determined to do so anyway. “I’m here,” he continued, unsure if it would help and even less certain if it would continue to be true once the sunset on one Chrismanukkah day.  
  
“I just wanted to know if they meant it,” Ben mumbled, sucking a stream of snot back into his nose. “They said they’d forgive me and love me no matter what and I just...I needed to see. I couldn’t believe them otherwise.”  
  
Hux nodded. He couldn’t pretend to fully understand- surely there were more efficient ways to test their honesty than this -but knew better than to voice his criticisms, now. Instead, he swayed from side to side, steadying his own breathing. And, as his big, stupid, fake husband trembled in his arms, his common sense grew fickle. Like water under a windshield wiper, Hux’s fortitude grew thinner and thinner with ever pass of their swaying bodies.  
  
“We can keep this going as long as you need,” Hux said, certain somewhere in his heart that he was lying but unable to stop the words. “I’ll be your fake husband as long as it takes, alright?”  
  
Ben snorted, laugh and sob colliding in an ugly sound. “Yeah?” he said, leaning back, wiping his watery nose with the sleeve of his sweater. “You gonna tolerate Chrismanukkah for years, now?”  
  
Hux stuck up his nose, adopting the military posture he’d so long known. “Ben Solo-Organa, I’ll ruin Chrismanukkah for the next decade if I have to. You have the solemn vow of an Order soldier.”  
  
“And that is worth so much more than the word of a lowly Republican, right?” Ben said, a smile cracking through the surface of his sorrow. To Hux, it was like the sun peaking out from behind total eclipse, the assurance of good days to return.  
  
“Don’t you know it.”

  
  
They walked back inside, arm in arm, once the redness on their faces had finally clear. Rejoining the family, Hux dove right back into conversation, ripping on Han for sharing long debunked war stories. He laughed loud and honestly, trading quips with Leia, all the while Ben held him close. Somewhere along the line, that’d stopped being something to remark on or spare a thought. It wasn’t strategy or a way to find warmth. It just was and it was right.

As the final plates started to clear and Luke went about scraping his pie plate down for gooey remnants, Leia raised her glass of mulled wine. “Everyone,” she called, drawing the other conversations to a close. “I have an announcement to make.”

“Don’t you always?” Han said, drawing a laugh from Lumpy and Lando.  
  
Leia clicked her tongue and took another sip of her wine, swallowing it down before continuing. She pointed at Hux, displaying not only her excellent manicure but the grace with which she could do something as pedestrian as pointing. “When Ben first sent us that card, Hux, I have to admit I didn’t know that to think,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine myself getting on with someone like you. I expected this party to go down in flames.”  
  
Hux lifted one brow. What strange move was this?  
  
“And I was right enough that you’d come in here all political and try and ruffle my feathers,” she said, drawing a grumble from Ben.  
  
“Mother,” he said, tugging Hux a little closer, sounding as if he was almost truly offended.  
  
Leia waved a hand at her son. “Now, wait. I’m not done,” she said. Carrying on, her eyes locked on Hux, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “Hux, you came right in and knocked around like a bantha in a store full of glassware. I figured I was going to have to eat you alive, but then-” she gestured with her glass for emphasis “I saw Ben’s face and knew that, no matter how we disagreed, no one else makes him as happy as you do.”  
  
Hux may as well have been run down by a bantha in store full of glassware, his body as rigid as a trampled paralysis victim. He went red at the tips of his ears, sweat pooling at the small of his back. As much as he searched for manipulative insincerity in her face, he only found something foreign - an almost motherly adoration.  
  
“Welcome to the family, Hux,” she said, raising her glass.  
  
The Solo-Organas toasted to him and, in that moment, Hux was certain he’d died somewhere along the dark road to Chrismanukkah.

 

The light flicked on in Ben’s old room, revealing a XL-twin bed and a myriad of model planes. “Sorry about the size,” Han said, stepping out of the way of Ben and Hux. He shoved a hand in his pocket, busying himself by staring at the dust that had gathered atop Ben’s lamp. “I’d offer you the pull-out couch, but Chewbacca would tear my arm off if I ever dared.”  
  
“It’s fine, Dad,” Ben said, slipping out of his shoes and setting them beside the door. Apparently having absorbed some of the proclivities of the frat house he lived in, he stripped off his belt and shirt without a pause, revealing a muscled torso tight enough to strangle the life from Hux.  
  
Or maybe Hux had simply forgotten to breathe at the sight of it. Either way.  
  
Han slipped out the door, maneuvering around a stunned Hux. “I’ll see you two in the morning for the gift exchange,” he called back, vanishing down the hall and into the darkness. “I’ll expect some help cleaning up all the wrapping paper.”  
  
Hux stared after Han for as long as he could, only looking back to Ben when he was certain the man was surely and truly and gone. Upon returning his attention to Ben, he found the other man stripped down to his boxers, one leg pressed inside flannel pajama bottoms. Hux cleared his throat, shutting the bedroom door and kicking off his own shoes.  
  
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and, in the spirit of Chrismanukkah, Moses. What was he supposed to do with this man?  
  
“Gift exchange?” he asked, trying to distract from the impending question of the bed hardly large enough for one of their giraffe asses, let alone both of them.  
  
Ben nodded, folding his sweater up into a bundle and tossing it on the floor. “Yeah, you know, like regular Christmas morning? Not that complicated,” he said, turning out the lights and sitting down on the ground beside his sweater. Ben sprawled out on the ground, laying his head on the sweater and closing his eyes. “You can take the bed. I’m fine down here.”  
  
Hux bristled, walking over to tower over Ben. “I’m going to look like an awful husband. I didn’t get anyone anything,” he complained, crossing his arms over his chest. Then, with a scowl, he nudged a foot against Ben’s stomach. “And the hell you’re sleeping on the ground. If they come in to wake us up in the morning, they’ll know this is all a farce.”  
  
Ben kept his eyes closed. “You’re suddenly really concerned with keeping this convincing.”

Stepping over Ben, Hux laid down against the bedspread. Even considering Ben’s antics, he hadn’t quite anticipated the multi-color polka dot print. It looked more suitable for a clown’s jumpsuit than bedding, but he supposed everyone had their youthful faults. “Just get up here,” he said, putting on his commander’s voice. “I won’t hear any argument.”

With a huff and groan, Ben pulled himself up onto the bed. He struggled, trying to slot himself atop it without forcing himself against Hux. It was a doomed attempt from the start.  
  
Hux squirmed a little, trying to make himself a little more comfortable (or perhaps a little less comfortable, given how strangely fine this all seemed in his head) beside Ben. Rolling over onto his side and forcing his back up against Ben’s chest, he said, “Just spoon me, it’s less weird.”  
  
“Is it?” Ben asked, incredulous. He obeyed either way, wrapping his arms around Hux because they seemed to fit nowhere else.  
  
“Yes, it is.”  
  
“Whatever you say, Hux.”  
  
A few minutes passed without further discussion, Hux falling into the blackness behind his eyelids. There, the complexities of the world broke down into nothing, the only sensation the warm press of Ben’s body against Hux’s spine. He wondered if he might be able to escape Ben’s hold now. His warm arms seemed all-consuming and inescapable, all too much like the Mariah Carey Christmas tunes they’d been forced to endure on the ride over.

Well, perhaps endure was the wrong word. The woman was a talented vocalist.

And perhaps Hux wasn't enduring this, either. Simply experiencing. Sinking into it like a man dipping into welcome waters, smiling as the waves came overhead and assailed his senses. 

The last thing Hux heard before falling asleep was: “Ah, shit. I forgot about the Backstreet Boys poster in here.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, wasn't this supposed to be a comedy I finished a year ago.
> 
> Great job, me. A+.


	4. The Christmas Werewolf and the Falcon

By three in the morning, Hux knew he wasn’t getting any more sleep.  
  
No matter how they twisted together, their limbs tangled up like Christmas lights, the truth was evident. As two fully grown men of considerable size, they simply could not fit in an extra large twin bed. In fact, as the hours ticked by, Hux began to doubt if Ben had ever fit in this bed by himself, let alone with company. Even laying atop Ben’s chest, as he’d been coerced into doing somewhere around midnight, he felt just moments from falling to the floor.

And damn if the bed wasn’t boiling. Ben’s warmth was engulfing, like the proverbial open fire where chestnuts roast. It might have been comforting in other circumstances, but insulated by his day clothes, Hux was a second from declaring the room a sauna and opening for business. The house was already filled with old people. Surely a few more in towels couldn’t hurt.

He sighed. What a fool he’d been, gawking at Ben’s bossom. If he’d only thought to trade his sweater for pajamas instead of ogling. Then, he might have been able to enjoy this proximity.

With his hand resting on Ben’s stomach, Hux narrowed his eyes. Beneath his fingers, layers of dense muscle lied. Ben was surely the most ripped art historian he’d ever encountered, more like the statues they studied than an undernourished academic. The temptation to look and touch— perhaps even taste—was great. But staring alone felt criminal, Ben’s sleeping face striking Hux with as much adoration as shame.

Tired thoughts curled up in those feelings. They spoke foolishness, and Hux braced against them. No, he could not wake Ben just to look upon him with less voyeurism. No, he could not let his hands roam where they had no permission to. And most of all, no, he could not press his lips to Ben’s, stirring him from rest so Ben might hold him closer and touch him more completely.  
  
Hux groaned and pinched his eyes shut, rolling as far away as Ben’s encircling arm and the bed’s edge would allow. He should have taken Lieutenant Rodinon up on his date four weeks ago. Maybe then he wouldn’t be such a lonely, thirsty creep. As close as he and Ben had grown over the last day— and that was undeniable, as much as Hux wanted to deny it —this was all terribly inexcusable.  
  
They had a professional relationship here, after all. Twenty dollars for photos, nothing more.

Even if that twenty dollars was long forgotten.

And even if he’d definitely signed on for more.

Ben shifted beneath him, taking a deep inhale. Hux tensed, worried his thoughts might be loud enough for Ben to hear. The man was inexplicable in so many ways. Hux wouldn’t be stupid enough to put unconscious mind reading past him.

But Ben stayed fast asleep, his chest rising and falling against Hux’s back. It was almost disappointing; Hux would have paid a hefty sum to be freed of this late night session of self doubt and frustration.

With a huff, Hux lifted his head and looked upon Ben. Tracking the invisible lines crossing between Ben’s freckles, Hux relented and despaired. There was no defense against the coming merriment. Even laying here, still as death, Ben made his chest tighten. Cookies and hot chocolate and presents; in the morning, Ben would be beaming over them all. And all the while, Hux would be forced to watch, his stalwart resolve dissolving with each laugh, an inevitable _something_ approaching inside him.

  
And where he may have fled yesterday, last night bound him to Ben’s side. He’d become the man’s perpetual fake husband in a snap decision that, somehow, he couldn’t quite force himself to regret.

Nevertheless, even with defeat on the horizon, he had to try and prepare for the coming onslaught. Hux closed his eyes again, running over the day’s events in his mind. At the crack of dawn, he would rise. Outside, Leia Organa and her boisterous underlings would greet him. They’d likely have cookies or egg nog or some other Hallmark cheesiness, their Holiday cheer an infectious virus poised to ruin him forever. And Ben?

Ben would sit down beside the Christmanukkah tree, giggle at whatever off-kilter gift Luke Skywalker found for him, and then reach for Hux’s gift to discover that Hux wasn’t only an accomplished general and perfect fake husband, but a sensitive soul worth keeping around.

They’d embrace, charming the whole family with their affectionate ruse. He’d feel the steady rhythm of Ben’s heart against his chest, not so different from the moment he presently occupied, and he’d add in a little kiss, just a final little pinprick at Leia’s side. The moment would firmly establish the joke. Everyone would know they were “in love”.

Yes, how clever he’d been, finding the absolutely perfect gift for his faux spouse.

His eyes flew open.

Wait.

Hux was up and on his feet in a second, sweat pouring down his back as he yanked his shoes onto his feet. Their loose laces dragged against the ground and he fumbled forward, feeling blindly in the dark. At another hour, when he wasn’t so trapped in the haze of rest, he might have had the better sense to realize this wasn’t all that important. But at one fifteen in the morning, with thoughts of sugarplums and Ben’s lips dancing in his head, he could only sprint toward the front door.

Second only to forgetting a fake anniversary, he’d forgotten his fake husband’s Christmanukkah gift.

An impossible mission materialized before him, guiding his footfalls out into the dark halls of the house. While not a creature was stirring, he would have to find something exemplary for Ben. The challenge of it was clear; he had no transportation of his own, everything was closed, and his knowledge of Ben’s interests stretched no further than photography, thrift shopping, burritos, and madness.

But fuck it. He was Armitage Hux, a genius even if he’d fallen into a pit of utter tomfoolery. With nothing on his side, he’d charge out into the world and make this right, pulling off a bloody Christmanukkah miracle even if he didn’t know how to spell the damn word.

  
Hux swung open the front door and stepped out into the night.

The night air greeted him, frigid and cruel. It wrapped around his ankles and froze him in place. Hissing, his breathe turned to frost.

The world was bright with golden light, the whole street shining despite their emptiness. As far as he could see, the suburban roads carried on, lined with their stunning decor, devoid of shopping opportunity. If he walked, he would be marching forever. Shivering would overtake him before his goal could be reached. And what sort of Chirstmanukkah present was it to find your “spouse” blue-lipped and trembling out on the street?

  
Hux tucked himself back inside the house, sliding his back up against the closed door. He wrapped his arms around himself, squeezing his hands for warmth. What was he to do, now? Traipsing about in freezing temperatures wasn’t an option, not especially when he was so thin and privy to illness. Winter nights weren’t made for paper men, their threats of snow and rain enough to melt him into ugly grey paste. But to leave Ben giftless?  
  
Well, he’d already made a goal of this. There wasn’t room for backtracking, even if he had to get inventive.  
  
Or criminal.  
  
Plucking a Ford car key from the basket near the door, Hux pursed his lips. Han Solo’s Ford Falcon was famously stolen anyway, right? Surely it wouldn’t be too wicked to take it for a quick spin around the neighborhood.  
  
And if it was truly awful, then what did it really matter? Hux was certain Santa already hated him anyway.

Slipping back outside, Hux pressed through the cold, shaking down into his shoes. He struggled with clammy hands at the car door, cursing under his breath as the wind picked up overhead. Once the key finally pressed inside the lock, he threw the door open and shut himself inside.

The world fell quiet inside the car, the rush of the wind dulled through glass and steel. Hux swallowed and set a hand on the wheel. The Falcon was in horrific disrepair; it looked to be more tape and peeled up upholstery than car parts, but damn if Hux was brave enough to touch Leia’s car or try and move everyone’s in order to free Ben’s from its trapped place at the top of the driveway.

Shoving the key into the ignition, Hux fired up the engine. The Falcon gave sputter and cough, thankfully starting after the second jerk of the key.

Mariah Carey tore through the speakers.

Hux jumped out of his skin, head smacking against the car’s classic low ceiling.

“Shit!” he spat, cradling his skull. This was already a nightmare and he hadn’t even left the driveway, let alone tried to trifle with the stick shift. Never mind the mess he’d be in if he got back after Han Solo woke up; Chrismanukkah morning would involve more eulogies than presents. But he’d come this far already, so he shook off the stars around his head and pressed on, the car stalling twice before he made it all the way down the road.

 

Ben woke to the cold. His eyes peeled open, sand clutching their edges. Rest had eluded him much of the night, tight quarters with Hux making the bed far too warm or small for comfort. But space felt abundant, now, and Ben found the blanket over his shoulders instead of on the floor. Reaching his arm out, he found that Hux was gone. It was only him and the Backstreet Boys in his childhood room now, his fiery little husband missing from the mix.

The clock at the other end of the room read three-forty in the morning. Ben squinted against its low, lighted numbering and then closed his eyes. Hux was probably in the bathroom, sure to return to their cuddle session shortly. He grumbled and nuzzled himself into the sheets, trying his best to leave room for Hux to tuck back into bed when he returned.

  
When Ben next opened his eyes, it was four-twenty, and the bed remained spacious and cool. He rubbed at his eyes and double-checked the clock, sitting up only once he was certain he’d read it correctly.  
  
Now, it was entirely that Chewbacca had poisoned Hux and left him to struggle in the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. It was equally likely that his mother’s speech had been a mere ruse and that she’d ushered Hux outside for an eighteenth century style duel beneath the moonlight. Less likely, but perhaps more entertainingly, it could have been the case that Hux’s opinion on the Nightmare Before Christmas was so adamant because he was some sort of Christmas werewolf. That would certainly endear him to Christmas-Halloween discourse.

But in any case, it was Ben’s job as a good host to seek Hux out and make sure he was alright.

He started with the restroom, ignoring his urge to check the roof for a howling man-beast. He found it devoid of light and, when he knocked on it, without an answer. The kitchen came next and, while someone had clearly been around to gnaw on Santa’s cookies, Hux was nowhere to be seen. Frowning, Ben peaked through the blinds into the backyard and gave the halls a quick sweep. When nothing turned up, he sat himself down in the front room, the Christmanukkah tree glowing at his side.

The longer he sat, the more obvious the most believable answer became. Hux wasn’t having intestinal trouble, dueling his mother, or a werewolf. Rather, he’d left. Like so many others, he’d looked at Ben, his situation, or some combination of both and said, “I can’t handle this.”

Ben brought his feet up onto the couch, knees tucked to his chest. It wasn’t a shock, but hollowness gathered in his chest, anyway. Hux had seemed skittish the night before. Their conversation had grown heady and, while he’d tried his best to sound supportive, the horror on Hux’s face was clear. This was “madness,” right? Just an idiot trying to ruin a good thing. Just a waste of Hux’s time with more discomfort than anyone deserved during the holidays.

Maybe he should have whipped out that twenty dollars at the start of all this. He’d realized he’d forgotten to hand it over the second Hux drove away on that first day. That was the moment their odd business entanglement became something else, either a violation of workers rights policies or two men genuinely enjoying each other's company. Had he only paid Hux, he might have felt more like he’d hired an irresponsible worker and less like he’d been dumped.  
  
Or worse, divorced on Christmanukkah morning. Left to tell his family it was either all a joke— no one really loved him —or that the love he’d found in their absence had never loved him after all.

Tears jumped to his eyes just as headlights shone through the front window. Someone was in the driveway; likely his father and Uncle Lando, back from an early morning drive into mischief. Ben bit down on his inner cheek and jolted, rushing from the front room and into the dark halls toward the bedrooms. Pressed firm against the wall, he sniffled once and hushed his breathing, waiting to see who might come.

The figure that came through the door, all red from the cold, could have been Santa Claus on tough times. He was stick thin and carrying plastic bags instead of a velvet sack, shaking as he tossed Han Solo’s keys back in the basket. Ben’s jaw fell open, his eyes widening.

Hux stumbled into the kitchen, flicking on the light and dumping his plastic bags on the countertops. Though they were less garbage riddled than the ones at Ben’s house— and to be fair, a dump was less garbage riddled than the counters at Ben’s house —Hux treated them with the same level of caution. He’d seen how Chewbacca ruled the place; there was no telling where a bomb could lurk.

Creeping against the wall, Ben peaked around the corner and into the kitchen. Hux was pulling handfuls of individually packaged string cheese out of his bag, lining them up beside a myriad of other snacks. His brow was furrowed, tongue poking just out of his lips as he accounted for his collection of purchases. Somehow, even with sleep ruffled hair and a fistful of McDonald’s® Picante Sauce Packets, Hux radiated the same auras he had glowering out from their holiday card: commanding, dangerous, and sexy as hell.

Hux turned to fiddle with the stove and Ben slunk further back, watching him from as far away as possible.

Sleep scratched at Hux’s temples, burying a migraine in his head. He rubbed it away with his hands, digging pots and pans from the cabinets and setting about his poor excuse for an amazing gift. Cooking had never been his forte; it felt too much like reminiscing to appeal to his utilitarian principles. But the simple motions fell into line, worked out through a muscle memory that he’d once cherished as genetic. His mother had not had the time show him much, but the little tricks stuck well enough.

As the scent of melting cheese— and thank god it was melting, Hux wasn’t sure string cheese even could —filled the room, Hux spied a dark shape in the furthest doorway. It was too large to be Leia, though she’d be the one he’d expect to strike him from the darkness. Chewbacca seemed to lack the stealth to loom so menacingly and, if not the stealth, the patience. Hux’s grip tightened around the handle of a hot pan and he steeled his expression. He’d stopped believing in Santa long ago; decking a midnight visitor with hot metal was not beyond him.

But the man that stepped before him was not a robber or Lumpy standing on Luke’s shoulders. It wasn’t even Saint Nick, here to fight Hux for stealing Han’s car. Rather, he was Ben, looking more pathetic than the last dog at the pound on the day after Christmas.

Hux loosened his grip of the pan and moved to cover the scene with his body, leaving most of everything still on display. “Ben,” he said, sounding no different than a serial killer discussing politics mere feet from his body dump. “What are you doing up this early?”Ben gestured to the mixture of McDonald’s and 7-11 bags on the countertop. “You went into town,” he said, leaving the whole stolen car as a matter of implication.

“Yes,” Hux returned, allowing his first question to fade into the ether. Ben’s appearance had yet to improve; as he began to peek into the plastic bags, he retained the droopy frown intent on scooping Hux’s heart out and throwing it down on the pan.

“That bag is mostly empty, now,” Hux continued, stepping away from the stove and toward Kylo. The space between them was alive, wild and unpredictable as the stretch of sea between the Order and Republic’s most heavily armed battleships. There, in the water, possibility waited. War and destruction, mistakes of passion, lingered, eager to be discovered by the first fool to call for fire. Or, in their case, the first slip of unspoken words, the world undone by feverish admission.

Ben took his hand from the bag, joining Hux in the timid closure of the feet between them. “I can see that,” he said, voice still rough from sleep and early morning upset. “What do you need tortillas for?”

Hux’s eyes flicked to the bag, spying the stray tortillas he’d left there. He inhaled, knotting his hands in the front of his shirt. The jig was up, it seemed. He’d not only been caught in grand theft auto, but now his Chrismanukkah surprise was ruined, too boot. He might have preferred being beaten up by Christmas elves to this, but there was nothing to be done about it now. All he could do was what he’d always done; take shit and salvage it, wearing the legacy of old mistakes as glorified memorabilia.

“I hated that burrito,” he blurted out, shoving his foot right between his teeth. “Not to say you have bad taste, of course. You did only say the place was worth it’s tacos. But I just...I needed to try and show you what a good burrito was like. I mean, of course I only had access to a convenience store and fast food place, given the hour, but I just couldn’t sleep knowing you’d go another Christmas— pardon, Chrismanukkah —without having enjoyed a proper-”

  
“Hux,” Ben said, earning a wave of Hux’s hand in his face.  
  
“Now wait just one moment, alright? I have to explain this properly or else you’ll just think I’m a food snob.” Hux lowered his hand, steadying himself with a little exhale before exploding into another flurry of nonsense. His speech and debate instructor from college would be more than ashamed. “Right, so, I just have really appreciated our time together and thought it be amenable that I offer you and your family a proper burrito experience in the spirit of the holidays. I recognize that this is perhaps the worst gift a husband could give to you, but I think that as far as fake husbands go it is a more or less acceptable atte-”

“Hux!” Ben said, harder, his eyes wide.

Hux sighed, balling his hands into fists at his side. “Now, listen. I am trying to say something important here. What could possibly be so dire that you find it necessary to interrupt me?” 

“The burritos?!”

Hux lifted his brows and followed Ben’s pointing finger to the stovetop. As his vision focused, a string of curses exploded past his lips. The tortilla he’d left to brown and the cheese he’d started to melt had more than burnt, the cheese looking more like the black plastic cat he’d put in the broiler as a child than food. He jumped from his place beside Kylo, turning off the burner and yanking the smoking pan off the stove. As he stared down at the utter failure, his cheeks filled with blood, shame turning him pink to the bone.

The fire alarm swooped in to deal the final blow.

Hux jumped, dropping the pan and letting it clatter on the floor. His hands flew to his ear and he huddled in the corner of the kitchen, far from the shrieking. Ben flinched as well, though he managed to grab a dish towel and wave it in front  of the alarm. The blaring stopped in under a minute, but both men shared knowing faces.

The damage was already done.

Before they could even hide the evidence, she was coming. Like the dark shadow of a storm cloud, she approached, stalking the halls in her robe. If this were a medieval drama, and Hux was not so sure it wasn’t, she’d have appeared in the kitchen with a blade in hand, ready to strike the offending cur from her household. “I extended you courtesy and welcome, Ser Hux,” she would say, firm as his life drained from him. “You should not have brought this bane of McDonald's and 7-11 down upon my house.”

But like a handsome prince or, more appropriately, the kindly fraternity boy he was,  Ben jumped into the kitchen doorway with a sheepish grin and announced, “Sorry! I was smoking some weed in here and I guess I got a little carried away.”

Leia stopped before him, her destructive storm pausing just feet from where she might spy Hux’s tragic burrito. Her eyes narrowed and she looked her son up and down, focusing on the tight pull of his forced smile. As seconds passed, Hux shrunk further into the kitchen, unable to see Leia but certain she’d push past her son to finish him at any moment. It was not until he heard her sigh that his heart ceased its racing, a semblance of hope rearing its head.  
  
“Ben, you better hope you didn’t wake Luke,” Leia said, rubbing at her temples. “I don’t need you both totally high in the morning.”  
  
Ben laughed and nodded his head. “I promise I’ll be level-headed for presents?”

Leia grumbled and turned away, returning to the darkness of the hall and allowing air to enter Hux’s lungs again.  
  
“Is she gone?” Hux whispered, inching toward the doorway. He looked past Ben, staring into the empty darkness of the house before sighing and letting his forehead fall against Ben’s shoulder. “Thank goodness. I just near had a heart attack.” He looked up, staring at the side of Ben’s face. “You thought so quickly, there. I...I appreciate it.”  
  
Hux brought his hands back to the end of his shirt, folding his fingers in the fabric. He avoided Ben’s gaze, fixing his attention firmly on the mole beside Ben’s lips. “Here I was, making a bloody fool of myself while trying to make you burritos and I not only manage to wake your mother, but burn the damn things to leather. You really could have made a better fake husband selection given— Ben?”  
  
Hux blinked, turning as Ben moved away from him and toward the pan on the ground. Wrinkles dug into his forehead as Ben knelt down, feeling at the black-spotted burrito remnants. Before Hux could protest, Ben picked a chunk off and shoved it in his mouth.

“What are you doing? That’s disgusting,” Hux said, rushing to the floor beside Ben. He pulled the pan away and guarded its charred contents, now not entirely certain Ben’s weed claim was just for show. “Are you mad?”  
  
“We already talked about that,” Ben replied, reaching again for the burnt burrito. Hux yanked it away, but he only extended his massive arms further towards it. “I’m not mad; I just want to appreciate the lovely present my husband got for me, is all.”  
  
Hux stilled, the pink on his face returning. Shame was chased off by flattery, and perhaps flattery vanished in favor of something a little more complicated. His mouth moved wordlessly until Ben was seconds from shoving another burnt scrap into his mouth, and then Hux was growling and diving forward to latch onto Ben’s wrist.  
  
“Drop it, you weirdo,” Hux said, shaking the piece from Ben’s hand. He stood, dragging Ben along with him. “I’ll make you another one if you want it so badly. There is no need to go around snacking on carcinogens.”  
  
“I think convenience store cheese is probably carcinogenic regardless of if its burnt or not,” Ben said, though he gave up on the burnt crisp.

He followed after Hux as he set about his second burrito attempt. Standing mere inches from Hux’s back, Ben focused on the nimble motions of his fingers, smiling at the fevered pace Hux had adopted. It was difficult to tell if the adrenaline or Hux’s nature was responsible, but even with such urgency, Hux managed to seem far too put together for a man who’d just set off a fire alarm on Christmas morning.  
  
They allowed conversation to fall to the wayside, with Hux silently directing Ben to hand him certain ingredients as he Frankenstein’d his way to a plate full of burritos. A few breakfast variety darlings appeared in the mix as Ben fished eggs from the fridge, though their more legitimate filling wore the same McDonald’s sauce. With each new creation, Ben’s place grew closer to Hux’s back until, eventually, the pair were flush together. Neither Hux nor Ben made a note of it aloud, though both let it dominate their minds until the last ingredient was used.  
  
Standing in the kitchen before the sun had risen with Ben Solo-Organa pressed against him, Hux wondered if the Falcon’s breaks had failed and thrown him off a cliff. The world was running at half-speed, the morning haze keeping his thoughts from fully developing. When Ben wrapped his arms around his waist and rested his head atop Hux’s own, Hux could only close his eyes and lean back into the touch.  
  
“Is this alright?” Ben asked, sounding half-asleep himself.  
  
Hux nodded, afraid to speak and end this pleasant dream.

Ben swayed side to side, easing the strain of burritos gone by from Hux’s mind. At the same, Hux let his hands fall over Ben’s and joined in on the rocking. At some point, he would need to move. Life would carry him out the door and back to his little room on the Order’s embassy grounds. Mitaka would ask him how the party had gone and he’d shrug the question off, desperate to keep the details as precious secret. But that world felt far away, in Ben’s arms. In fact, the whole world vanished, replaced by pleasant warmth and the smell of Christmanukkah burritos.  
  
It was ten minutes before Ben’s grip loosened, his hand reaching out to take one of the burritos from the platter Hux had stacked them on. He took a bite under Hux’s expectant watch. The flavors, a collection of cheap garbage pressed together with determined care, struck him still.

And maybe it was because he was tired, or maybe it was because he was college student, or maybe it was because Hux had made it just for him, but Ben knew, even before he swallowed, that it was the greatest burrito he’d ever tasted.  
  
“How is it?” Hux asked.  
  
Ben answered by pinning him against the fridge and pressing their lips together, his nose pressed hard enough against Hux’s cheek to bend. There was no camera this time, no Leia Organa to recoil horror. As their lips moved together, Hux clutching onto Ben’s chest, the only audience they shared were there own thoughts. And though neither man could really explain how they’d wound up here, making out on Christmanukkah morning, neither had the heart to complain.

Pulling back was the most painful movement in Hux’s entire life, and his head hit the fridge as he struggled to regain his breath. His lips were kissed cherry red, pupils blown wide as adrenaline replaced sleepiness as the source of his light-head. Ben was looking back at him, just as haggard. Lord, he was beautiful. Like a model if models could hold the meaning of the universe in their big, sad eyes.  
  
“I’m guessing it was good then,” Hux said, mind reeling as Ben’s breathe continued to brush over his mouth.  
  
Ben nodded, adding, “I just thought you might want to try it for yourself.”

Hux scoffed, wrinkling his nose at the comment. “Oh, be quiet,” he mumbled, forcing his face into Ben’s shoulder. But, even as he grumbled and postured, he could feel his heart singing inside his chest. It was the sound of the Backstreet Boys off Ben’s poster, an angelic choir exclaiming, “I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me.”

It wasn’t clear what they ought to call all this but, more and more, Hux found that he didn’t care about sense in the company of Ben Solo-Organa. The only thing that mattered was the proximity, the touch.  
  
And, deeper than that, the little flutter of his heart.  
  
“Do you want a bite of this?” Ben asked, offering his burrito. Hux nibbled off a bit, unconcerned with germs with as much spit as they’d already swapped. As it went down, his body tensed and revolted.  
  
“Oh, god, that is vile,” Hux exclaimed, wiping his mouth against his wrist. “How did you even swallow that? It just tastes like beef jerky.”  
  
Ben shrugged. “I like beef jerky.”  
  
Staring up at Ben, Hux frowned. “Alright,” he said. “Well enough.”  
  
“It’s skinny and red, just like you,” Ben added, all sickeningly sweet as he rubbed his nose against Hux’s. When he pulled back from the nuzzle, he laughed and flashed his teeth in a wicked grin. “Oh, look, now you’re really red.”  
  
“Quiet!” Hux said, tapping one fist against Ben’s chest. “I’m a fearsome soldier, you know. I could end you if I wanted to.”  
  
And, all at once, as certain as Ben was that Hux’s pout was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, Hux was certain that Ben’s snicker was the cutest thing he’d ever heard.  
  
  
  
By the time the gift exchange came around, Hux had discarded the burritos and disguised all evidence of their production. He opted in for Plan B, producing the finest bottle of vodka 7-11 had to offer as gift for the Solo-Organa household. Han accepted it despite the plasticity of Leia’s smile, more than happy to start his New Year’s celebration a few days early. And while Ben smiled at each little trinket he received from his family, Hux knew that Ben had loved his gift most of all. It was assured in the little glances Ben stole whenever he thought Hux wasn’t looking. Each was longer than the last, and Hux tucked them away in his memory.  
  
When it came time to go, they walked out hand in hand. Ben gave Lumpy a little hug and then the little cretin wrapped himself around Hux’s leg, declaring, “It was nice to meet you, Cousin Hux!”  
  
And where Hux might have flung the child into the freaking sun a day before, he reached down with his free hand and ruffled Lumpy’s dense hair instead. “It was nice to meet you, too, Lumpy,” he said, smiling with a genuine affect he’d thought lost to the ages. “Do be safe with the Nerf gun, won’t you? No need to go taking your eye out.”  
  
“And why shouldn’t he?” Lando questioned, leaning up against the door frame with Chewbacca. “A man with one eye is mysterious. Dashing. He’d have a much easier time in life, I think.”  
  
Lumpy gawked at Lando, turning to his father to get his opinion. Chewbacca only grumbled, which was enough affirmation for the boy to take off into the house hollering about pirates and skipping out on university.  
  
Ben gave the same adorable chuckle from a few hours before. Hux watched his face, unable to hide his own smile. “Look at that kid go,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Kinda makes me miss our own.”  
  
“Yeah,” Hux returned. Standing just like this, he could almost believe the little world they’d made up together. He almost wanted it to be real.  
  
Leia stepped forward to end the scene, as she so often did. Her arms wrapped around Ben and she whispered against his ear, earning a nod from her long lost son. Then, she turned to Hux. With a queen’s dignity on her face and a hand on Hux’s cheek, she stole the potential for speech from Hux’s lips.  
  
“I want you to keep this rascal here out of trouble, Hux,” she said, patting his cheek. “Husbands need short leashes, otherwise they’ll waste half their lives chasing the glory days with their friends.”  
  
Han, Lando, and Chewbacca cried out in protest, but Luke only laughed.

“I’ll do my best, Leia,” Hux said, squeezing Ben’s hand with his own. “But frankly, I think he drags me into more trouble than I keep him out of.”  
  
Leia drew her hand and pointed in Hux’s face, smirking. “Well, that’s how you know it’s good, then.”

Leia Organa, the enigma, left him on the same note she’d started with— a hug and million questions. Clearer headed than the first time around, Hux found she shared her son’s warmth. When it left him, he mourned it. Despite all he’d ever thought of her, there was a strange sense of loss in her sudden departure. How little he’d seen of her, but how deeply she’d affected him. Perhaps it was the greatest political move of all; somehow endearing herself upon her enemy, spitting in the face of years of hatred. Planting, once again, that little seed of hope.

“Merry Chrismanukkah, boys,” was the last Hux heard from her before she took the others away and vanished behind her wreath-covered door.  
  
“What did she say to you?” Hux asked immediately, still recovering from her touch.  
  
Ben looked over at Hux, studying his wide eyes and parted lips. “She said to hold onto you, no matter what it took,” he said, weighing the words in the hopes they wouldn’t come out too heavy. “Because real love is all we’ve got, in the end.”

Maybe it was corny, maybe it was true. But either way, Hux had to bite his smile back like it hurt to do so. “More holiday platitudes,” he said, well aware he didn’t believe his own doubt. Tugging at Ben’s hand, he asked, “Are you ready to head out?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ben said, heading toward his car and tossing his gifts in the back. The moments their hands parted while they got in their seats almost ached, and their fingers met again as soon as the seat-belt laws had been respected. Backing out into the street, his car freed from its place in the driveway, Ben clicked his tongue.  
  
“So, uh, about that twenty dollars,” he said, righting himself on the road. While the street lay empty, the sidewalks bustled with activity, children taking to their yards to compare new toys and race shiny bikes between stop signs. The lights hung from the rooftops, unlit and awaiting their removal. Still, they caught the sun, shining bright as they could in their dwindling hours, making the most of their dire situation.

Hux leaned against the window, staring his own reflection in the face. Despite the awful night’s rest, he hadn’t a dark circle in site. “You can get it back to me in the form of dinner this weekend.”

Ben’s grips on his hand tightened. “Is that a, uh, business or pleasure dinner?” he asked, clearing his throat.  
  
“That depends” Hux replied, smirking. “Was that a business or pleasure kiss back there?”

Ben was forced beet red, his lips pursing as he barreled toward home. “So,” he said, voice strangled with nerves and leaving Hux with the most adoring impression. “I can count on you to take the job again for Rosh Hashanah?”  
  
Hux rolled his head back toward Ben, his eyes narrowing. “You’re going to have to tell them this is a lie at some point, you know.”  
  
The morning sun shone through the window of Ben’s old muscle car, catching the man in the midst of one of his perfect, lopsided smiles. “I don’t know about that,” he said, reaching down to crank the radio and its final moments of Mariah Carey worship. “Things keep going this good, I might never have to.”

And, while Hux was certain he’d never heard anything so crazy in his entire life, he found that there was nothing else he desired so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Chrismanukkah, my dudes. 
> 
> I am happy to call this work done, though I could perhaps be convinced to give it another chapter or a continuation if interest in that classical "liar revealed" plot line is substantial enough.
> 
> Further holiday sequels, maybe?


End file.
